[NU Sports] Chicago Olympics 2016

Tue Jan 24 17:44:54 CST 2006

Jonathan,

All valid points.  The only problem is, if you put the Olympic question to the taxpayers of Chicago (or Illinois, since Chicago could not pay the whole amount themselves, and all of the venues would not be in Chicago), it would fail.  Estimates of the cost of Sydney 2000 are at about $5.9 Billion - all revenues, tickets, sponsorships, etc. were only believed to be $3.6 Billion.  The last estimate I saw for Athens 2004 was $14.6 Billion.  Two good articles:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/olym-m03.shtml

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/athens/news/2004-11-18-cost_x.htm

Additionally, you would be asking taxpayers to foot the bill for venues for events that they likely could neither afford to attend, nor obtain the tickets if they could afford them.  

http://www.psychpage.com/learning/library/intell/school3.htm

Remember that 44% of Illinois schools are NOT meeting the minimum requirements for No Child Left Behind;  About 1.8 million Illinois residents lack health insurance;  One of every three Illinois hospitals is losing money, according to the Illinois Hospital Association;  The City of Chicago and State of Illinois cannot, in good conscience, ask the taxpayers to foot the bill for a multi-week sports festival that most of them cannot attend, while so many other needs in the state go unmet, or poorly met.  It might happen, but I doubt if the voters would approve the expenditure.

The last line of the Sydney story is instructional:

"As NSW's Auditor-General, said, when asked how the public would benefit from the Games: "The taxpayer, the taxpayer has ah, has paid for the privilege of paying for the Olympics."

Chuck Herron   Tech '85

-----Original Message-----
From: Jonathan Michael Hawkins <spiritu at northwestern.edu>
To: nwu-sports at tssi.com
Sent: Tue, 24 Jan 2006 14:26:43 -0600 (CST)
Subject: Re: [NU Sports] Chicago Olympics 2016

Chuck-- 

Thanks for your message. 

> Speaking as a Chicago suburbanite, it would be an incredible pain. 

Speaking as a Chicagoan, you could stay at home in Elmhurst or Palos Heights or wherever you live and never even catch a whiff of the Olympics. 

> Traffic is already murderous - no one wants any more congestion. 

This is true, but it wouldn't affect intelligent spectators at the Olympics, who would intelligently choose to avoid congestion and ride the el. 

> Today it was announced that the Chicago Public Schools may have to axe > 1000 teachers just to handle a sudden spike in teachers' pension costs. 

This is irrelevant and utterly misleading. They have to cut jobs because the teacher's union mismanaged their $10 billion pension fund and failed to cover their costs. The city is required by law to make up the difference, which is forcing Chicago to let actually-teaching teachers go to pay for the pensions of old teacher's union teachers who are either unwilling to hire a successful fund manager or are too incompetent/corrupt to do so. 

> Every city that has hosted an Olympiad has suffered huge losses. 

Ask Peter Ueberroth about that. And Billy Payne, to a (much) lesser extent. Their Olympiads and Chicago have something in common, which is left as an exercise to the reader. 

> Please - NO OLYMPICS EVER ! 

Now we get to the crux of the matter. It's not Chicago bidding for the Olympics, it's the Olympics in general. This is much like the hard-core socialists or, on the other side of the aisle, guys like Andrew Stuttaford. 

Thanks for sharing, Chuck. 

Best, 

Jonathan 

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