• New York City may shell out as much as $1 billion to keep the Yankees from moving to New Jersey.

• The New York Mets want a mere $100 million to fund a new stadium with a retractable dome, to keep them from moving to Long Island.

• Maryland taxpayers are being socked for almost $300 million to fund a new stadium for the former Cleveland Browns, and to help finance a new stadium for the Washington Redskins.

• Seattle voters last September turned down a proposal to hike taxes for a new stadium for the Mariners and repairs to the Seahawks' Kingdome, but a month later city and state officials approved a $320 million plan for the Mariners' park.

This Keynesian analysis is used to justify every "stimulus project"; but it ignores the substitution effect and the negative effects of higher taxes: households spend leisure dollars on sports events they would have spent on other leisure activities, and higher taxes raise private-sector costs and depress private-sector investment.

Such government "investments" are money losers. A Pioneer Institute study, for example, notes that due to cost overruns, taxpayers' portion of the total bill for Toronto's Skydome ballooned from $120 million to $322 million. The government's share of the Skydome was privatized in 1992 for $120 million -- a considerable loss.

San Francisco voters, however, have turned down tax-financed stadiums on four occasions, and now the Giants are privately financing a new ballpark.

Source: Raymond J. Keating, "Pitching Socialism," National Review, April 22, 1996.

Many municipal, county and state governments are saving taxpayers big bucks by outsourcing -- hiring part-time, temporary and seasonal workers to perform duties previously handled by higher-paid employees.

• From 1990 to 1995, local governments' use of contract workers grew in 18 of 20 service fields, according to surveys by the Mercer Group, a consultancy firm.

• In Indianapolis, outsourcing has reduced public employment 40 percent over three years in fields outside of police and fire-fighting services.

• Sunnyvale, California, relies on a temp company for 25 percent of its work force.

• Massachusetts, New Jersey and Georgia have ambitious plans for current and future outsourcing.

The big savings come from lower wages and reduced benefits.

• On average, the public sector spends twice as much on health care, retirement, vacations and other benefits for civil servants as it does for short-term workers or those on private contractors' payrolls.

• In Indianapolis, the per-home cost of garbage colledction fell 37 percent over three years, and the city's solid-waste budget shrank from $43.9 million to $26.8 million -- while complaints fell 30 percent.

• Since one in seven of that city's sanitation workers is now a temp, savings are running in the neighborhood of $500,000 a year.

Due to increases in productivity -- which sometimes run as high as 40 percent -- cities can sometimes award higher wages and bonuses to permanent workers.

Critics of the growing trend note that a step onto the lower rung of the middle class -- low-paying but permanent civil service jobs is disappearing, and that temporary workers are usually paid less than their full time colleagues without benefits, for the same work.

Source: G. Pascal Zachary, "More Public Workers Lose Well-Paying Jobs as Outsourcing Grows," Wall Street Journal, August 6, 1996.