Who-d a-thunk it? Government involvement in sports stadiums and the Olympics are financial boondoggles?

Who-d a-thunk it? Government involvement in sports stadiums and the Olympics are financial boondoggles? | AEIdeas:
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Who-d a-thunk it? Government involvement in sports stadiums and the Olympics are financial boondoggles?
Mark J. Perry | February 6, 2014, 3:58 pm
From James Surowiecki’s article in The New Yorker “The Sochi Effect“:

Whatever happens on the ice and snow of Sochi in the next couple of weeks, one thing is certain:
this Winter Olympics is the greatest financial boondoggle in the history of the Games.
Back in 2007, Vladimir Putin said that Russia would spend $12 billion on the Games. 
The actual amount is more than $50 billion. (By comparison, Vancouver’s Games, in 2010, cost $7 billion.)

As Josh Barro points out in a Tweet, $50 billion is 2.5% of Russia’s GDP, and the equivalent of the US spending $400 billion on the Olympics (that’s also equivalent to the annual Gross State Product of Massachusetts).
HT: Greg Allar"