- Mayor Rahm Emanuel is reassuring Chicago taxpayers that they won’t be stuck with the bill for all the activity, security and disruptions that will occur around the NATO Summit the weekend of May 19.
[...] But Mayor Emanuel says Chicagoans will not be footing the bill directly for the summit.
“First of all, taxpayers will not pay anything for the summit, and that’s why we raised private money and I secured federal money – so that’s number one,” Emanuel said. “And yes, I do feel like we’re going to be able to meet our budget.”
As an astute reader pointed out, the feds don't just print money to pay for these things. And we certainly recall having sent in a tax return this year, so if there's federal money involved, we've already paid for it somewhere down the line.
This is funny though - an actual person with an economics background says the city isn't going to make diddly squat:
University of Chicago economist Allen Sanderson says the actual economic benefits often turn out to be about 10 percent of what the boosters predict.
“Look, anytime an organization conducts an economic impact study, there is a weak link quality to it; you’re going to produce a report that’s very favorable to whatever activity you want to do,” Sanderson said.
In this case, Sanderson says NATO would bring at the most a $25 million economic benefit, and far less than that if things get out of hand.
An economist from the University of Chicago? That department has won something like 8 or 10 Nobel Prizes over the years. In fact, at one point the Nobel people were just going retire the award to the U of C and stop giving it out since everyone knew where it was headed year after year.