Comments on: What will the Vancouver 2010 Olympics do to the economy?

By: behlitt veau

behlitt veau — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 13:52:07 +0000

When the Prots celebrate the 'fruits of our [their] labor' is the basis of the admirable Protestant work ethic.

By the way, the Protestant Work Ethic is why capitalism works so well in White Anglo Saxon Protestant countries, and fails elsewhere. Capitalism is cultural specific.

By: caten

caten — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 23:24:10 +0000

if you're looking for more sporty activites, you could head down to jericho beach and do windsurfing, kayaking or sailing if your family is into those kind of activities. berry picking near the countryside can be fun too. or if you just head out to whistler or some place like that, you could go dock jumping at the lakes or mountain biking.

if you're more of a city person, you could visit the art gallery or the science musuem or go shopping at the metropolis.

famous locations inclue capilano bridge, stanley park, downtown, gastown

By: noitall

noitall — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:29:59 +0000

Vanoc has already been assured (by the IOC) at least breaking even for the games budget. That’s one big risk factor taken out since the governement was required to cover any losses from actually operating the games. The immense amounts of money spent are talking about mainly infrastructure costs. Depending on your opinion, those should have been done anyways. Such as the upgrades to the Sea to Sky highway which gets a lot of traffic and has a lot of accidents. The upgrade was needed anyways, but that $600 million is counted by some as an expense related to the games. Same for the Canada Line for the Skytrain. A similar amount was spent on that. We had no good way to get from the airport to downtown so it was needed, but many have considered it a games related expense. Same again for the close to $1 Billion convention center upgrade that may or may not have happened if not for the Olympics. Lastly is the Olympic village. The city has a huge amount that it spent on the village. It’s yet to be seen how much of that they can recoup when they sell off the units there but speculation at this point is that they will lose money.

Hopefully the above shows that losing money on the Olympics is not a straight forward question. Two completely honest people will give opposite answers just based on their opinion of what is an "Olympic Expense" and what was needed regardless of the Olympics. My opinion is that these projects were all long overdue and so if it took an Olympics to get them done – great!

As for the economic benefit, the predictions vary widely but it will be very substantial. A lot of entra money will be coming in over the years due to the new infrastructure and the new exposure that the Olympics brings. Definitely in the hundreds of millions over time.
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By: Question Guy

Question Guy — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:15:59 +0000

Well, according to this, the tickets are sold out:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=280442426752&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT
That means a lot of folks are coming to the city so they’ll spend money on hotels, food, etc. I’m thinking of bidding on some tickets on ebay myself so I can go.
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By: IFUSEEKAMY

IFUSEEKAMY — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:04:59 +0000

i was 13 when the 2002 games where in my city
it was awesome,
i didnt know what the ecomony was at the time
but they were alot of people, for those few weeks the worlds gonna be watching you
so yeah lookin back now there was an eco boost
business’s were packed,
like those "roots" hat, they were so hard to get, had to wait over an hour to get them.
it was awesome, go out alot, and see as much as you can
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