just say NO

and I ain't talking about drugs, Nancy Reagan.

We the people should say NO to our governments offering subsidies to businesses.

Some examples:
1.  Amazon HQ2.  Jeez after two years of analysis and seemingly every city in the country pitching (prostituting themselves) deals---turns out the New York deal went bust. 
2.  Wisconsin and Foxconn.  Looks like neither side of this deal is happy---Foxconn is discovering that they can't find folks in the US to work 12 hours night shifts for $54k a year and Wisconsin is discovering that they ain't gonna get that much for their $ 3 billion in subsidies.
3.  Chicago is probably the home of the worst deal ever--the sale (ok 75 year lease) of their parking system.  When Chicago sold the parking concession to a group of private investors the city was making about $28 million a year on parking.  A couple of years later the private investors were marking about $135 million a year.  The city actually even agreed to terms that if a parking spot became unavailable (due to construction etc) the city would pay the investors to make up for lost revenue.  In 2018 that top up payment was $27 million.  So I would suggest that the city of Chicago in order to meet pension needs (and avoid raising taxes near and election) sold a great asset for about 20-25% of its value.  For 75 years.  OMG
4.  Pretty much every stadium deal out there.  How many owners are in financial difficulties?  How many cities?  Who do you think got the better deal?

A quick additional side note---businesses make mistakes all the time.  Airbus just announced that they are shutting down the A380 superjumbo jet program.  That program was estimated to cost about $40 billion.  And they are saying--"oups notre mauvaise".  It turns out the market wasn't really there for this kinda plane.  If a business can make that kinda screw up just think about the terms politicians negotiate......and cringe.

And politicians are particularry bad at business negioations because of a little thing called externalities which they tend to not price right (few people do) and they are not incentivized to price right (if anything they are incentivized to price wrong).  Let me explain.

Just in case you have forgotten your Econ 101--an externality is a cost or benefit that affects a party that did not choose to incur that cost or benefit.  To be clear externalities come in both good and bad flavors---sadly both politicians and voters tend to be really good at seeing the near term positive externalities and really really bad at valuing the costly long term externalities (interestingly enough businesses tend to be really good at seeing the long term positive externalities for themselves).  Thus politicians often do deals that help them get re-elected by providing a great short term headline but are long gone to higher office, a lobbying job, or even working for the business they negotiated the deal with when the bill comes due (just look at tax cuts and the US deficit, or Chicago and their pension deficit for an example of this). 

Bringing this home to Aspen--I cringe when I see Aspen citizens being asked to help fund the development of the lift one project.  Big picture whenever you put elected officials and business people in the room together you can bet that 9 times outta 10 the elected officials don't get the better end of the deal.  Yes it is always possible to have a win-win, but any developer worth their salt should be able to make money in Aspen real estate without public support.  If the deal requires public support why don't we ask that businesses interest be directly inline, and by that I mean the city should get an ownership stake in the development.  How big an ownership stake, look at how much equity (not debt) the development team is putting in and add the city's $4.4 million to the equation.  See if the developers want a city investment at the same terms they are investing.  My guess is, NO WAY which ought to tell ya something.

Overall, voters and politicians should just say "NO" when it comes to providing subsidies for businesses.  Businesses are great at playing different cities and states off against each other to get the best deal (see Amazon HQ2).  And who can blame them?  If a city wants to make a business investment more profitable the business owner wouldn't be doing their fiduciary duty to their investors to not take advantage of leveraging their investment to get the best terms possible.  However, cities aren't helpless in this game.  They need to all agree to just say no to subsidising business deals.  Keeping politics out of business and business out of government will be better for all in the long run. 

I would suggest that all the elected officials out there listen to Warren Buffet when he said 'if you have been at a poker game for 30 minutes and you don't know who the patsy is the patsy is you'---that is pretty much always the case when you are offering businesses subsidies, so please do right by your citizens and don't play in that game.

reasons guest can't leave--a la David letterman

1.  snow
2.  snow
3.  lots of good snow resulting in choosing to stay
4.  snow prevented crew from getting in on time so they won't have legally required rest so they can't fly out the next day even though it's beautiful and the plane is here (yea that actually happened) followed by more snow
5.  didn't get bag checked 45 min before flight so couldn't fly (even though they got there 55 min before flight the bag check machine wasn't working)
6.  too much wind
7.  not enough visibility
8.  no plane (weather elsewhere stopped the flight)
9.  rockslide in glenwood canyon closing I-70
10. snow

Number of guests who have actually left on time (2 out of 15) and they flew in and out of Eagle

Have a mentioned that line about guests and fish?