It's natural for people to fear that which they don't understand.

Author: iairishcheeks (30102 Posts - Original UHND Member)

Posted at 3:09 pm on Jul 27, 2026

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The DSA has a few good ideas, IMO. And one of them is to manage data centers as a public utility.

Here is what is happening locally:
Tax Break Structure
Property Tax Exemption: Facilities receive a 20-year exemption on 70% of the project's new property valuation, paying regular taxes on the remaining 30%.

Rebates and Fees: Projects like QTS also secured up to a 75% rebate on electrical franchise fees collected via Alliant Energy over 20 years.

State Programs: Incentives are backed by the Iowa Economic Development Authority (IEDA) High Quality Jobs Program, which ties tax credits to local job creation and capital investments.

There is short term job creation that will mostly dry up once the data centers are online. Long term, locals will pay more for electricity and water.

The primary fear from the youngsters is that AI will take their jobs, it's valid but is inevitable.

Replies to: “It's natural for people to fear that which they don't understand.”

As China pushes the Left's protests of our data centers for their own advantage, I have yet to hear - BaronVonZemo - 2:54pm 7/27/26 (12) [View All]
- It's natural for people to fear that which they don't understand. - iairishcheeks - 3:09pm 7/27/26
  - Energy is the one real issue, but it has several good solutions that they don't appear to care about - BaronVonZemo - 3:17pm 7/27/26
    - A single medium sized data center consumes water equivalent to 30-40K private citizens. - iairishcheeks - 4:40pm 7/27/26
      - Spot on...anyone...including Baron...could have found out about this, had they cared to learn why - TyroneIrish - 6:18pm 7/27/26
      - Not with a closed loop system. [NT] [LINK] - BaronVonZemo - 4:51pm 7/27/26
        
        Tradeoff: higher power usage. - iairishcheeks - 5:04pm 7/27/26
        
        Which they could pay for with their separate commercial nuclear energy system that I described. - BaronVonZemo - 6:49pm 7/27/26
        
        I completely agree that there are solutions, but the solutions aren't being considered. [NT] - iairishcheeks - 8:20pm 7/27/26
        
        Exactly my point. Very solvable. But goal of Left is to block US AI project per Chinese funders…. - BaronVonZemo - 9:54pm 7/27/26
        
        . [NT] - TyroneIrish - 6:10pm 7/27/26
- Ludditism lives on the left. [NT] [LINK] - Curly1918 - 3:05pm 7/27/26
  - Flawed thinking that causes them to repeat their mistakes over and over again. Ironically, they - BaronVonZemo - 4:56pm 7/27/26

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