Miami-Dade County is paying billions for their new ballpark

People complain about government spending, right? How half of the country is on food stamps and sucking the other half down because they refuse to work, right? Costs need to be cut! Local governments need to stop giving these handouts that only help lazy people!

Then you read a story like this and realize that the needy might be the cause of the problem, it might be the rich people. Public financed stadiums are the biggest farce in all of sports. We pay billionaires to build these palaces designed to charge us more money so we can go watch our favorite baseball team play. The public doesn't get the money back, it goes back to the rich owners. Owners that worth billions of dollars themselves.

Now Miami is on the hook for BILLIONS of dollars for their new ballpark. That's right, they are going to have to pay back billions of dollars so people can go to a privately owned ballteam's game. Good lord.

FROM DEADSPIN:

The county chipped in $500 million for the construction of Marlins Park. The county did not have $500 million, but construction needed to start and be paid for immediately. So Miami-Dade borrowed the money by selling bonds on Wall Street, a loan which won't come due for decades.

When it does, it's going to hurt. The Miami Herald does the math on just one set of those bonds, which raised $91 million. Payments begin in 2026, and quickly skyrocket. By 2048, when the last payment is due, the total reaches $1.18 billion.
....

this $1.2 billion is only on one set of bonds. The total payments for all of the $500 million borrowed by the county will eventually come in at a whopping $2.4 billion. Not only did Jeffrey Loria get taxpayers to buy him a stadium, but they bought him the most expensive stadium ever built.

One thing I noticed is that they'll be paying in 2048. Anybody think that the stadium will still be around by that time? The owner will probably be clamoring for a new state-of-the-art ballpark that actual pickpockets fans as they walk through the concourse far before the date.

Now since it was voted that the county had to build the stadium, they had to find the money somewhere because they just didn't have that kind of cash laying around. Apparently we're more concerned about our cool new stadiums then the local government actually serving some public good.

(If you want to waste money, buy this Marlins hat.)