Thomas Sowell gives the San Francisco city golf course a grand slam. Here is his article. Here are my Spotlights on the failures of city owned and operated courses in Sanford, Mooresville, and Thomasville.
The story is the same cities lose millions of dollars on golf courses that benefit upper income individuals while justifying the deficits by arguing that they are helping the poor.
Here is a sample of Sowell’s article:
Even the suggestion
that the golf courses might be turned over to some private operator of
golf courses has caused opposition. One golfer declared: “Privatization
would raise greens fees. Nobody could afford it.”
This is the kind of talk that has to be taken seriously by
elected officials, even if an economist would dismiss it as sheer
nonsense. Have you ever heard of any business raising its prices to the
point where it no longer had any customers?
Obviously, what “Nobody could afford it” really means is that
this particular golfer and others like him might not be willing to pay
it. But that is the whole point of prices — to determine where
resources go when different people want to use the same resources for
different purposes and have to bid against each other.
