Quote:
Originally Posted by Monahammer
This is an interesting question, i suspect you asked it indignantly/ to try and make a point about public investment in the library.
I would be willing to bet that the outcome would be different than you expect.
Here's a great study done by the Indiana Business Research Centre on the economic impact of Indiana's public library system: https://www.ibrc.indiana.edu/studies...aries_2007.pdf
The executive summary notes that direct economic benefit of $2.38 resulted from every $1 of cost on libraries (not including any indirect impact, which the arena $$ return value you posted certainly does.) This figure rises substantially if you also include wages and public expenditures the libraries need to make to operate.
If proportional, that study would imply that calgary's central library will generate ~ ($245 million *$2.38/1$)= $583.1 million
Let's round down and say $500 million in direct economic value according to academics. |
If you are going to include direct/indirect impact on wages etc., you have to do that with the arena project also. How much do the teams/events spend on employee wages and costs for food/goods used. Then when you expand the wages and goods to outside facilities such as restaurants, bars, cabs etc., (which this report does to show impact on outside groups) the number would have to be in the billions. I am sure the report does not show what you thought it was going to show. So if we use your number of $2.38/1$ then the arena will provide $645.5 M on the city contribution only. You can not use the report/calculation on only projects that you choose to champion.