Interested in your comments on this:
The Star-Ledger newspaper in Newark, N.J., is threatening to shut down without $9 million in union concessions. This comes after years of bleeding red ink. The situation resembles pro sports' labor issues in many ways: public squabbling, doomsday threats, etc.
And while I'm no economist, I'm going to assume newspapers serve just as many people as baseball teams entertain. And since they probably employ more of people than a pro sports team....would $10 million a year in public subsidies be better served on newspapers than pro sports?
For the sake of argument, let's pretend a public subsidy wouldn't create any awkward conflicts-of-interest (after all, the Tampa Bay Times is thriving under the Poynter Institute's non-profit exemption).
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Public subsidies to private industry is wrong, be it to billionaire sports owners or unprofitable newspaper publishers. I will say that it is more wrong to give to the billionaire sports owners.
ReplyDeleteBailing out private industry is a losing proposition for the taxpayers and the receivers of the funds, as it drains the public coffers of funds needed for more important problems and inhibits the private industry from getting to 'root cause' of their problems.