Evan R. | Red Phoenix correspondent | Oregon–
The Democratic Governor of Oregon, Tina Kotek, has given the state’s data centers $500 million in tax breaks and seeks to expand this rebate with an upcoming bill in the latest legislative session.
The state, and the working people in it, can ill afford such a gift to corporations like Google, Meta and TikTok. While Oregon and its municipalities desperately cut vital public services to the bone in order to make up for financial shortfalls, the governor has been exempting some of the most predatory and polluting enterprises in the state from taxes for decades.
Data centers, and the “AI” technology they enable, are a disaster for both the planet and the proletariat. Since 2010, Industrial power usage in Oregon has spiked by 73%. This has caused a massive increase in power rates throughout the state, forcing Oregon workers to subsidize the data centers whose role is to eventually replace their jobs with automation.
A single data center consumes 2 megawatts of power, roughly equivalent to 2000 homes, and uses millions of gallons of water for cooling. As the data centers are expanding at a faster rate than Oregon’s power grid can sustain, this is putting a massive strain on the electrical system in the state. By 2030 it is estimated that Oregon will face a 9 gigawatt shortfall for electric generation, the burden of which will be borne by Oregon’s workers. Beyond just raising rates, as the climate crisis continues to accelerate, this wanton waste of power becomes evermore outrageous.
Far from the economic panacea that they have been portrayed, these data centers employ very few people. This is not unique to Oregon, according to the Goldman Sachs “AI” has added virtually nothing to the national economy. With day to day operations mostly automated, the only jobs created are temporary construction.
Oregon is an attractive location for these data centers because the state lacks any sales tax, meaning that the data centers save millions when they periodically upgrade and replace state of the art and expensive computer hardware. This means that other than a minimal payroll tax gathered from the few workers that these facilities employ, there is no revenue coming in whatsoever for the state or municipalities. Each one of these data centers represents not only an ecological disaster but also a theft from the workers.
This problem is particularly acute in a state which is facing widespread budget crises. While Kotek hands out half a billion and counting to the largest and most malevolent corporations on earth, the people of Oregon are suffering from the ravages of austerity as both the state and municipalities scramble to make cuts to necessary public services in order to avoid budget shortfalls.
As usual, this brutal austerity is lethal. It is estimated that 454 people died from exposure to cold in Oregon last year even as Kotek and her administration claim that there is no budget to open warming shelters. In Multnomah county alone, at least 372 homeless people died in 2024, only 8 of those to natural causes. This number will only increase as the city of Portland, facing a $169 million dollar budget shortfall, is scrambling to cut vital public services such as homeless shelters, thereby forcing even more people into the streets. Multnomah County will be forced to cut nearly one-third of its shelter beds in order to cover an $87 million dollar budgetary hole.
As Kotek hands out half a billion to the richest corporations on earth, Portland’s public transit system, TriMet faces severe cuts to cover $300 million in budget shortfalls. TriMet provides over 1.5 million rides a week and is a vital resource for many workers, who depend on cheap and effective public transit to get to work and perform vital tasks in their day to day lives. Beyond its value as a public service, public transit is vastly more efficient ecologically, consuming a staggering 550% less fuel on a per person basis versus cars.
Portland Public Schools are $50 million in debt and forced to cut 300 jobs and shut down schools to compensate. Meanwhile, TikTok’s data center in Hillsboro, a Portland suburb, has received $56 million in tax rebates in exchange for creating a paltry 11 jobs.
These are the actions of a governor who claims to be a progressive and who ran on a platform of “Investing in kids, improving our schools.” Like so many so-called “progressive” politicians, Kotek talks a big game to get elected, but when it comes time for action she will invariably find herself on the side of the bourgeoisie. Even “progressive” capitalists will not save us from the decline and degradation that is inherent to capitalism itself.
While it is tempting and not altogether incorrect to call Kotek a liar and a hypocrite, the stark reality is that Kotek is little more than a figurehead. As the head of state government in a dictatorship of capital, Kotek is powerless and her own beliefs are meaningless.Her policies are not her own, but those of the bourgeoisie, whose only goal is the relentless pursuit of profit. As the rate of profit continues to decline in tandem with the decline of moribund capitalism the bourgeoisie are compelled to take more and more resources from the people in order to compensate. Kotek’s job is little more than to implement these processes and take the blame for their inevitable failure to provide the people of Oregon with a decent standard of living.
In order to generate more profits, the bourgeoisie manipulate the market, funneling money into non-productive technologies such as “AI,” which will function only to increase their own profit margins by replacing jobs at the cost of massive expenditures of power, water and public money. Single-mindedly consumed by the pursuit of profits, the bourgeoisie cannot make long-term decisions, but must maximize short-term gains at any cost. This, along with other mechanisms inherent to capitalism, creates massive speculative bubbles that serve to enrich the corporate and financial bourgeoisie at the expense of workers. When these bubbles pop, billions in wealth disappear from the pockets and bank accounts of average workers while the banks are bailed out and move on to the next scheme.
“Translated into ordinary human language this means that the development of capitalism has arrived at a stage when, although commodity production still “reigns” and continues to be regarded as the basis of economic life, it has in reality been undermined and the bulk of the profits go to the “geniuses” of financial manipulation.”
V. I. Lenin, Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.
It doesn’t have to be this way. A better world, and a more rational system is possible. Rather than subsidizing the rich and slamming brutal austerity on the poor, we could be using these technologies to provide a higher standard of living for the masses, but unemployment and homelessness are features of capitalism essential to its existence and “competitive” market structures.
If workers band together under one independent organization and arm themselves with a scientific, political ideology, that of our class, it is possible to build a better system and a better world where the masses benefit from scientific advances rather than a tiny elite. It is possible to build a system where we no longer wantonly waste resources and poison the world so the rich can further exploit the poor.
As America descends deeper into the spiral of fascism and the bourgeoisie do everything in their power to accelerate the climate crisis, we must act now. We must reject all forms of capitalism and work together to build a grassroots, class conscious, mass movement which can bring about its permanent end.