Vince Alberta says: “We generate a return on investment of about 10 times the amount.”

If the LVCVA’s activities have such a great ROI, then why should Las Vegas taxpayers be forced to fund their budget out of tax revenues? Good investments can find private investors, and if the casinos, in particular, benefit from LVCVA’s advertising, why not ask them to foot the bill for their own good investments?

If, on the other hand, the LVCVA’s activities are not actually beneficial enough that firms wouldn’t be willing to cover the costs on their own, then why should Las Vegas taxpayers be sent the bill for such a waste of money?

In either case, I can see no reason why we need a government-funded agency doing advertising for multibillion dollar private businesses.

I don’t see anything wrong with buying “shit you don’t need.” There are lots of things that I don’t need, but which I choose to buy anyway because it makes my life better to have them. E.g., books, music, tasty food, computer equipment, furniture, hot running water, trips to visit my family and friends, etc. etc. etc. Of course, I could choose to abstain from these and limit my spending only to necessities. But why should I?

Of course, there are also many activities that make your life worthwhile that do not require a purchase. To the extent that corporatism cuts people off from these forms of enjoyment, corporate capitalism should be undermined and resisted. But whether or not one chooses to personally abstain from spending on non-necessities does just about nothing to address these issues. The power of corporate capitalism to restrict alternative forms of enjoyment has very little to do with individual decisions about consumption and a lot to do with the monopolistic privileges granted by State power at the points of production and acquisition of land and resources. These are better resisted through labor organizing, targeted strikes and boycotts, resistance to State coercion, etc., rather than doing what “anti-consumerist” groups typically do, i.e. adopting an ascetic lifestyle and chiding, ridiculing or harassing those who aren’t as personally hardcore as you are.

Arthur,

Again, I’m not denying that parents have a legitimate right to reclaim the money that is stolen from them in taxes, whether through education vouchers or through other means.

What I am saying is that voucher systems constitute a government subsidy to private schools, in virtue of forcing the parents to spend that reclaimed money within a cartel of government-approved private schools. There is nothing wrong with parents reclaiming stolen money through the voucher system, but the cartelized schools that financially benefit from federal patronage are still subject to the usual libertarian analysis and criticism offered against government subsidies.

There is no benefit that you could possibly get from a government voucher scheme that you could not get just as easily from a no-strings-attached tax break, and some specific evils that vouchers but not tax breaks would produce. So the question is, given the choice, why advocate the cockamamie transitional government scheme, rather than just advocating the simple libertarian measure?

No, “returning tax-payers’ money” is not a subsidy. But forcing the recipients to give the “returned” money to one of a select cartel of government-approved “private” schools is a government subsidy to those schools.

If you want to return tax-payers’ money, why not just advocate tax cuts?