In my blog last week, Are Colorado ski towns running a Pyramid scheme, addressing the question of whether tourism is actually paying for itself or are ski towns papering over the tourism issue to continue to increase their budgets. The results were crystal clear.
What was in the survey data on Colorado ski town Pyramid scheme?
I was not surprised by the results, 80% of respondents felt that ski towns were running a pyramid scheme trying to replace revenue with more and more tourism even though the existing tourism isn’t fully paying for itself.
Top Comments on are Colorado ski towns running a Ponzi scheme
The ski resort communities typical governmental/economic policy framework is progressive, leaning into a command economy. History shows that such systems have failed and cause to a painful economic realignment so to return a market equilibrium. At some point – continue to tax, redistribute treasury funds to favored projects cause negative economic stress that will break.
Ski towns have no way of predicting the fluctuation of income from tourism take Covid till now. Real Estate prices are reflecting the trend. Ski Towns need to set base expectations on residents levy’s and then back fill from tourism however I seems that ski towns are falling into the hole much like the blue cities. Never ending taxes Neverending wishes
My sense is the leadership sets up structurally flawed budgets based on “pie-in-the-sky” inflated revenue projections. The result: budget deficits. Then the same leadership schedule’s emergency meetings to devise increased tax revenues on the community.
Summary
The results from the last survey were surprising in that 80% felt that ski towns were for all intensive purposes running a pyramid scheme where new tourism is being used as existing tourism isn’t paying its way. The last 5 years this strategy worked as tourism was growing at double digits, but now, the music has stopped and almost every ski town is feeling the budget constraints. Thank you everyone who participated in the survey, your insights are amazing
Additional Reading/Resources
- https://coloradohardmoney.com/vail-loses-major-lawsuit-should-you-only-buy-real-estate-in-a-vail-resort/
- https://coloradohardmoney.com/are-colorado-ski-towns-running-a-pyramid-scheme/
- https://coloradohardmoney.com/colorado-property-taxes-jump-40-percent/
- https://coloradohardmoney.com/category/survey-results/
