The Kevin Durant Tax
Oklahoma City has set a date in early March to vote on a 1 cent sales tax that will be used to fund improvements to the Ford Center in the hope of landing an NBA team (don’t tell Seattle residents, but it’s the Sonics).
Whenever there’s a vote like this I always wonder what the people with no interest in professional sports are thinking. They don’t give a shit about luring the Sonics to their city. What they give a shit about is having to pay 1 cent more for toilet paper.
Imagine if all of the sudden you had to pay a few cents more so your city could build a $200 million museum dedicated to the history of ballet. You would flip your shit. (That’s sort of what happened in Pittsburgh—after using taxpayer funds to build stadiums for the Steelers and Pirates, the good citizens had enough. They turned their backs on giving the Penguins a new arena and the team nearly left town. Fortunately, the good people who build slot machines and casinos were able to step in and provide some funding.)
Anyway, when it comes to the Oklahoma City vote I picture a horde of angry old ladies storming city hall and claiming how they put their kids through college with pennies and they won’t surrender those precious cents so that a bunch of hoodlums can play basketball.
Of course there are other benefits that come with having an NBA team in your city (benefits besides an increase in the bling industry). These include increased tourism, an influx of money into the local economy, and a state of the art facility that can be used for Hannah Montana concerts.
Even if they don’t see all these benefits, I’m sure the Oklahoma City residents will approve the tax. They desperately need a professional sports team to get over what I assume is a terrible inferiority complex from nobody caring about their insignificant mid-western (or is it mountain-western) lives. If that’s not enough, the possibility of running into Johan Petro at the supermarket will seal the deal.
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