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Comment by Acrobatic_Road | Hacker News Reader

They sure have a right to enact policies that keep them economically & demographically irrelevant.

https://cdn.xcancel.com/pic/orig/638FA4CD35438/media%2FF5jNt...

Data Centers would have made them sooooooo rich, very silly policies indeed, they’d be swimming in money

I can't tell if this is sarcasm? On the chance that it isn't, how would that make them rich? The profit from the data centers goes to the owner not to the people in the community or rest of the state.

There's this thing called taxes...

That are paid (if not avoided) at the location of the owner, not the location of the dc.

Datacenters really aren't that good for the locals. Low property tax, just tens of jobs but very high infrastructure needs.

I live in Northern VA, the world capital of data centers and can co-sign this. they bring absolutely nothing other than our electric bills have literally doubled in the last 24 or so months

Instead of banning datacenters, why not just increase electricity rates for industrial customers?

If they build datacenters anyway, there should be plenty of extra funding for power infrastructure.

makes too much sense but of course they’ll move to Texas then and you’d again be labeled (like poor Maine here) as unfriendly to businesses and god knows what else

The DCs are in VA because its fed / spook central, which induces a large number of well paid policy / compliance / paperwork / tech jobs etc.

NoVa literally one of the richest regions on the planet and it's all sorta tied up in the same thing. Seems unfair to say DCs "bring nothing", the whole ecosystem is a manifestation of concentrated defense spend.

> electric bills have literally doubled in the last 24 or so months

To all the dopes wondering why people hate your data center contribution craze so much this is why.

Don’t know why it needs to be spelled out so explicitly. It’s obvious to anyone with an IQ above room temp. I’ve seen it all over the country at this point. People are really made when their bills get real expensive.

There aren't taxes on datacenters in Texas. They gain virtually nothing from them!

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/04/08/texas-data-centers-s...

That ignores all the tax revenue they bring in at the local level. Virginia also has tax exemptions at the state level, but as another commentator points out, data centers are delivering a huge share of tax revenue in places like Loudon County.

And of course you can (and should!) get rid of those state tax exemptions which have served their purpose.

It's emblematic of Maine's wider anti-business and anti-growth climate which may explain why the state now has the highest median age in the US and one of the lowest fertility rates of any state.

Interesting that there’s sort of a blue line right down the middle. Wonder why

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