The far-left Wall Street Journal reports that at the end of 2024, there were only 100,000 motion picture jobs in Los Angeles County, compared to 142,000 two years earlier.
That’s a 30 percent collapse.
The Journal spends a thousand or so words laying out the symptoms without diagnosing the disease causing it. Here are some of the report’s bullet points:
- After the boom that saw the studios spending billions to bulk up their streaming services with lousy TV shows and movies, that screeched to a halt a few years ago. Compared to 2022, 30 percent “fewer movies and TV shows with budgets of at least $40 million began shooting in the U.S.” So far, during this year alone, that number dropped by another 13 percent.
- If you don’t count the pandemic, Los Angeles is suffering its worst production activity drought in 30 years.
- There’s a fear that people are “pivoting permanently from professionally made content to the endless buffet of YouTube and social media.”
- Due to the recent wildfires in Altadena and the Pacific Palisades, places where many production people live, the Los Angeles housing crisis has only gotten worse.
- The high costs of Los Angeles cannot compete with states like Georgia or overseas. A recent tax credit (Hollywood loves Reaganomics when Hollywood benefits, but not when everyone else does), might make the area more competitive.
So, according to the WSJ, those are symptoms. Let’s go through, one by one, and talk about the disease, which comes down to decades of unfettered political leftism.
Why did the studios decrease production? Easy. All that content they produced failed to attract enough streaming subscribers to justify the production costs. And the reason all that content failed to attract subscribers was because almost all of that content was shit, and almost all of that content was shit because it was poisoned with social justice, woketardery, gay stuff, grooming, obnoxious girl-bosses, and smug, humorless heroes.
Why else is production down so much? Costs. The unions ensure that union crews are prohibitively expensive, especially compared to places like Georgia and overseas. Then you have the high cost of living in Los Angeles, especially energy costs, taxes, and housing. Why are living costs so high? Los Angeles is a Democrat-run city in a Democrat-run state. Democrats can do whatever they want without opposition and the results have been catastrophic. Millions and millions of illegal aliens keep housing costs high and wages low. Democrats despise cheap energy, and high energy costs increase the cost of everything else.
What caused the fires that have only exacerbated the housing crisis? Leftism. California puts trees, plants, and animals above people. They don’t maintain their forests. They spend so much on illegal aliens, there’s no money for the basics, like fire maintenance. And now that these neighborhoods have been leveled by fire, Democrats deliberately make rebuilding as onerous as possible so people give up, and the land that once housed idyllic neighborhoods can be turned into ghettos blotted by strip malls and low-cost housing.
The real disease, though, is that most of the people in the entertainment industry continue to vote for the Democrats who have destroyed their state, city, and industry.
Whose fault is it that the YouTube and Facebook videos are superior to the crap on Disney+?
Whose fault is it that Democrats run everything in California and Los Angeles without any opposition?
Whose fault is it that Los Angeles County’s population has dropped by a quarter million in five years, and those are undoubtedly the Normal People who paid the taxes and kept up their homes?
Whose fault is it that the Hollywood trade unions operate more as Marxist political organizations than ones concerned with the well-being of their members?
Side note — The WSJ article is primarily a look at middle-class production workers, so here’s a newsflash: Marxists hate the middle class more than any other group. Unlike the wealthy, who are easily manipulated using guilt and status… Unlike the poor, who are easily manipulated with grievance…. The middle class is happy and satisfied, and therefore the least likely to join the cause. The Marxists who run your unions want you eliminated. Dummies.
Whose fault is it that the entertainment industry works overtime to insult and alienate more than half the country, the half that, if they returned, would double your customer base?
Democrats took control of the most beautiful part of America—Southern California, and ruined it, making it unlivable.
Democrats took control of the greatest and most popular art form ever created—moving pictures, and ruined it, made it unwatchable.
Good job, y’all.
Learn to coalmine.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
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