Raiders are Moving to Las Vegas: The NFL Gets Slightly Less Statist

The NFL Gets a Little Less Statist… Kinda

The Raiders are moving to Las Vegas. This has caused a deal of controversy in different groups. Fans, obviously, aren’t happy. Many sports pundits believe that the NFL is all about money (well, duh). Yet, some players are happy because Nevada has no state income tax. The owners definitely are happy, voting the move in a 31-1 fashion. The Nevadians, I assume, are having mixed feelings. On one hand, they get a new football team – a feat many believed impossible given the vices Vegas promotes and the NFL’s stance on it – on the other hand, they just granted the NFL $750 million in public funding.

Let’s tackle the state income tax first.

From an article on Liberty Hangout,

California’s highest marginal income tax rate is 13.3%, but Nevada has no state income tax, which means a player making $10 million will get to pocket an extra $1.3 million – about as much as the average American will make in their entire lifetime.

So while players are still required to pay the 39.60% marginal income tax to the federal government, they won’t have to pay the onerous Californian state income tax.

Yet, should NFL players be obligated to pay nearly 40% of their income to the government at all? Studies show that 1 in 6 former NFL players go bankrupt after two years of retirement.

Perhaps they are all really bad at financially planning the rest of their life. After all, playing in the NFL is a rather short-lived career. The the average career is anywhere from 3.3 years to 6 years.

Undoubtedly, the players are somewhat to blame for their financial sufferings after retirement. However, maybe if the federal (and in many cases the state) government(s) didn’t steal so much money from them, they would see more financial success after football.

Hey, I only said slightly less statist…

I love football, but I have a big beef with them too.

No my beef isn’t that their entire existence is to make money. Money is a virtue. It is used in order to provide the most amount of value to the most amount of people. It makes exchanges easier. Yet, the NFL makes money in nefarious ways.

The NFL gets public funding to fund all their new stadiums. Of course, public funding is just a euphemism for plundered funds. They steal from the taxpayers to subsidize their stadiums, regardless of if the people really wanted a new NFL team or not. Instead of allowing owners to make these huge financial investments out of their own pockets, the government grants them a socialist pass to steal those funds.

This is the biggest problem in the NFL, and in all sports, today.

This makes them the third NFL team to be relocated in the past 14 months. In those past 14 months, we have experienced *relatively* stable and good economic conditions, at least in the minds of most people.

It would be tragic if the relocation of these teams happens during an economic crises. If times are tough, and people are forced to pay for a stadium, they will only grow worse.

The new stadium would be a form of malinvestment. I doubt any owners, receiving free money from the taxpayers, would stop production of the new stadium. They might be completely unaware that it is a malinvestment since they don’t have their own money invested.

This will just make the recession longer and harder, will reduce the standard of living of most people in the town (excluding die-hard Raiders fans living in Las Vegas), and might curb relocation attempts in the future.

While this might be good news for potential future victims of the coerced subsidization of stadiums, the Browns are still in Cleveland. And that’s tragic for all of us.

Source: Gimme Liberty

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