You know what a state government facing a potential multi-billion budget deficit should do?  Spend $635 million on a football stadium.  That’s according to a New Jersey businessman … who just coincidentally happens to own the Minnesota Vikings (via Mitch):

With the state and federal governments looking for ways to jump-start the economy, a New Jersey businessman has an ambitious public works project he says will create more than 5,500 jobs and provide $500 million or more to local contractors.

The businessman is Zygi Wilf, principal owner of the Minnesota Vikings.

The project: A $954 million, state-of-the-art stadium for his football team in downtown Minneapolis — to be constructed using more than $635 million in public money.

“Why not? The Vikings are a public asset,” said Lester Bagley, the Vikings’ vice president in charge of stadium development. “This is going to create an economic boost.”

The Vikings are a public asset?  Er, only in the sense that the team finally stopped making public fools out of its fans.  Wilf owns the team outright, and the public has no financial interest in the Vikings.  That won’t change with a publicly-subsidized stadium, either; the team would keep the profits while the rest of us fund it with higher taxes and expensive maintenance.

Zygi’s proposal brought joy to the halls of government in St. Paul, or at least mirth:

In fact, two legislative leaders laughed out loud when asked whether the House and Senate would seriously consider the Vikings’ bid this session.

They should be laughing at the entire idea of government stimulus spending for economic boosts.  Taking capital out of the market lowers the amount of money that could go into creating economic expansion and gives it to the least economically efficient spender, the government.  That’s necessary for critical tasks like law enforcement and legitimate infrastructure maintenance.  It’s ludicrous to use that kind of capital in support of a private organization at any time, let alone when the state faces a potential fiscal crisis.

In order to reverse this crisis, we have to get government out of private enterprise rather than further into it.  Wilf’s self-serving tonic for the Twin Cities merely provides a balder example of avarice than that given by the myriad of private companies queuing up to the federal trough these days.