Willie has what’s known as a luxury belief. that is, one that he can afford.
there are lots of people in poor counties who are poor but can feel rich if they hold luxury beliefs.
the data centers send lots of money in taxes to local governments who support them. The sound they make are not great. but you have to live close to them in order for that to happen. I live in loudoun county virginia which is the datacenter center of the world. There are roads with miles of data centers on them. but you have to drive those roads to notice them.
I don’t notice them. but I do notice that this county has all kinds of money available for public services.
> Willie has what’s known as a luxury belief. <
Good point, and perhaps one I should have noticed earlier.
Yes and no. It's a mixed bag.
I asked Grok if AI data centers are a net gain (tax recenue) or loss (government subsidies) for local communities. Here's the answer:
Subsidized? Yes—aggressively, via tax expenditures that cost governments (especially states) billions in forgone revenue each year as AI-scale builds accelerate.
Profitable tax revenue? Often yes at the local level where property (and especially equipment) taxes apply and incentives are not total giveaways. Net state fiscal impact is frequently negative on a narrow tax-expenditure basis; overall economic return depends on multiplier effects, whether the facility would have located elsewhere, and unpriced costs (power, water, grid upgrades).
Outcomes are highly location-specific. Established hubs with mature tax structures (e.g., parts of Virginia) show clear local windfalls; newer or heavily abated deals can look closer to pure subsidies in the short-to-medium term. Audits and independent reviews increasingly question the return on the largest automatic exemptions.
In short, governments deliberately forgo significant tax revenue to attract these facilities, while many host localities still collect substantial (and sometimes transformative) ongoing tax payments from the resulting high-value assets.