For what it's worth, the village of Lake Placid currently has thriving tourist economy and the town is very well off. Without the 1932 and 1980 Olympics it would be a poor shit hole like the rest of the small towns in update New York.

Similarly, Salt Lake City was hardly a city before 2002 and now has a big tech industry, great public transportation and incredibly progressive compared to the rest of Utah.

Obviously it doesn't work out for everyone and costs have certainly gotten bloated in the last 20 years, but it's unfair to lump all the Olympic towns together like you do.

And to your point of making it international it would destroy tourist numbers for the event as (at least in my experience) the point of going to the Olympics is to take in the event as a whole, not just individual sports which no one really cares about outside of the Olympics.