Future of tech and data centers with new congress

In today's Dollars and Cents, now that the votes are in and Democrats will take control of the House and the Senate, what does that mean for the battle over data centers and the tech companies? Financial advisor Chris Markowski joining us now to talk about that. Good morning, Chris. Good morning. I would think that stricter guidelines in the permitting process is what we're going to see. What do you think the impact on the data centers in the short term and in the long run will be? I certainly hope they crack down on this. That's been a big point of contention here in the state of Florida. Current governor, and he's on his ways out, Ron DeSantis, is very, very clear on the fact that, you know what, we're not going to be doing any sort of eminent domain situations and taking farmers' land and turning them into data centers. And I don't think we should do that. Anywhere, quite frankly, I think I'm a big property rights guy. And you can all go back to there was a Supreme Court case in Connecticut back in the day. It was Kilo versus New London, where they seized a person's property because Pfizer wanted to build a plant there. I don't care how much people want to beat China, which to me is nonsensical when it comes to AI. If someone wants to sell their land, sell their land. However, we've already seen property values drop. For people who have homes and whatnot around these data centers, people don't want to buy around there. For the life of me, I can't understand why we wouldn't be going to certain parts of the country that have been hollowed out and maybe some urban areas that haven't done as well to look for this. There's a common sense solution that can be had with this problem, and I hope we get there. Yeah, I think we all hope that. It's a lot of uncertainty around that. I've been reading a lot about this, and it looks like... Some talk about maybe other industries may benefit as well with this because the spending will be spread out. Some other, the resources will be shared instead of it all being focused on AI. Well, what do you mean by the resources? You're talking about the spends in regards to electricity, water? I'm confused. All of it. Yeah, money, water, electricity, that some other industries could benefit from the, you know, evening out of these resources and spending. That's on the list. First and foremost, I've seen some really kind of shady stuff where you've got data center companies saying, hey, you know what, we'll cut you a one-time check if you put this in here. But people fail to realize the ongoing costs they're going to have, not to mention the fact that property values are going to drop, but the higher cost of water and the higher cost of electricity. And you've got all these, whether it be government or companies, saying, trust us, that's not going to happen. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That trust. But verify once it comes up like this, you have to be very, very doubtful. And if they're going to do any sort of payoffs, they should be over the long run. Anytime again, you start seeing a flow in one direction, there's there's always an overreach. And my hope is right now, because we've got a bit of a balance now in Washington, D.C., we'll get that. And we might get, again, like we said, some common sense approach to this. Yeah. And I know the other argument is always like, oh, it's going to create jobs while they build while they build the data centers. the data centers. It's very short term. Right. I mean, there'd be we'd be better off with construction on some homes, maybe. Have you ever been in one of these data centers? There's not many people in there. A lot of noise. But once you know, once they're up, you know, they're really not much you have to do, for crying out loud. So, yeah, you know, if you get the construction jobs that are up front, but what is the ongoing as far as unemployment is concerned, it's negligible. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting to see how this all plays out. Thank you so much for weighing in, Chris. You got to have a great day. You too.