Olympic plan involves building giant things that can then be shrunken down

Budweiser would give folks visiting from other countries a terrible impression. (The Czechs especially would not be pleased.)

And if he does get a tax break you don't like, don't blame him, blame the lawmakers who game him the breaks.

Gillette was built with 100% private financing from Kraft. If you want to complain about Bazillionare's fleecing tax payers, go talk to residents of Florida.

The footbridge also wasn't for the mall, it was for the parking lots across the street used for football. Go down there on game day sometime, there are at least 20 Staties posted on RT 1 to allow pedestrian's to cross the street. I haven't seen a cost/benefit analysis on this, but I imagine in the long run a bridge would cost less than having all these officers acting as crossing signals, would improve traffic flow on RT 1 while also allowing the now excess police officers to focus on more important matters like people driving away from the stadium drunk.

Please read the Boston Globe article and then maybe edit your comment since part of what you're proposing won't work.

LA has a population that can support large public venues. They also have far more highway and local street capacities than Boston which reduces roadways. Having events at B.U. is a funny one. Would love to see the Green Line and Comm Ave try to handle 100,000 spectators on top of regular work-day traffic. I wonder what neighborhoods would get razed to build new stadiums and housing complexes? Assembly Square might finally get developed after Ikea and Walmart were rebuked.

We have still not recovered to 2008 employment levels and traffic keeps getting worse. Some serious house cleaning is needed at DCR and local city planning departments to rid them of anti-car, anti-bus attitudes so that the local economy isn't more harmed by slow, expensive transportation on top of high wages, high property costs, and high natural gas and electricity costs.

Oh, and also, Boston anti-fun laws would need to not apply to the Olympic Village. Perhaps the whole area would need a break from them. Easier than explaining how "world-class" cities like Boston and Cambridge require closing everything starting between midnight to 2 am.

The state being under the gun to host an international event would mean fixing our infastructure. That, plain and simple, is worth any downsides.

Yeah, because there's no way the state could possibly fuck up a major, high-profile infrastructure upgrade. Guaranteed to be completed on time, under budget, and without a single unforeseen problem. Just like the big dig.

My point again is you can't compare by population without qualifying Boston's relative wealth and land area. Comparing Metro Boston versus Metro other city is a fairer comparison than just Boston alone. Like I said above, we can't both use the counterargument of our unusual land de jure borders doesn't reflect our true size when people talk about Boston's size and then also raise our hand saying we're to small when it comes to the Olympics. To use Boston's population within our 45 sq miles versus how the other cities has ~100-200 sq miles is a disingenuous comparison. At least without noting that aspect.

Again, I'm not saying Boston should host an Olympics. Just arguing of using the population citation as an argument that we shouldn't/couldn't.

Now you're changing to an economic aspect from a population aspect. Related, but still different.

If you want my economic opinion, I'm a numbers person and if the numbers calculates that we'll be painfully in debt to 2060 for a crazy 2 weeks and a new stadium, then yeah screw the Olympics. But if we're to ask economic questions, then have to ask what are the factors to the costs in the Olympics. I'm sorry if you lack even looking up Wikipedia on "Cost of the Olympics games". In irony to where you think I'm going, but just about every recent city felt the pain regardless of size. The historical numbers seems to say the Olympics most sucked for any city, regardless of tax base. Athens is hemorrhaging even worse than Montreal regardless of its size. Beijing got plenty of a hangover despite having 20 million people. The real factor seems to be the management (which looking at Boston's recent history, not confidence boosting). Population is a factor, but you need to also factor examples like Athens building 30 new venues and no one to use it after.

But in a balance view, I can hear out counterarguments including cities allegedly economically successful. Also consider scenarios where we it could make it work. Remember that I said I like CSX railyard? Well another part of why I like it is it gives more hope than the others. Like a scenario where Harvard would come in and help. And if Harvard announces tomorrow that it help with part of its $30 billion dollar endowment, I would not still be clinging to our tax base size. Is this likely to happen? Probably not. But I'm not dismissing the Olympics until I hear how Boston would fund it and who/how is doing this.