The Pantaloon : Someone Else’s Money : Brother Wagwit

The Pantaloon
Edited by Brother Wagwit
Earlyish in the 21st Century

Someone Else’s Money

Developers have much in common with politicians. They lie to get your attention; they promise so you’ll you commit to them; they don’t deliver because, well, they just don’t; and throughout the process they always use someone else’s money.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. One has the power to grant special-interest funding, and the other has special interests that require funding. A politician will fund a developer’s project as part of, say, an opportunity zone, which allows the developer to make money in the construction and integration (sell to consumer) stages of a project, and later, make a tidy cream-off-the-top profit by selling the finished project to a third party who will find it attractive because of all the built-in tax incentives.

The equation is frequently flipped for even more symbiosis: Once enriched by public funding, the developer will in turn contribute to a politician’s election fund, and dangle a consultancy/lobbying job offer as a well-remunerated retirement plan.

Other similarities are evident in their approach to fund management. A politician will go feudal to stop any other government entity from dipping a hand in his/her treasure chest, and a developer will go full-out free-enterprise ballistic to prevent any government entity from determining how and where received funds are spent.

For developers, the holy grail is a publicly funded project, yet, they are the loudest complainers when it comes to public development regulations, which are frequently skirted by politicians to favor the symbiosis.

Developers, like politicians, want room and board, and to be coddled too.

Always with someone else’s money.

Silver spooning.