The New York Times pointed out Saturday that while Democrats once jeered tax breaks for Hollywood from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) as “corporate welfare,” they now plead for those tax breaks, in much larger amounts, with Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) obliging.
The Washington Post noted Saturday just how dire the “existential crisis” of economic annihilation is in Hollywood today:
Over the past decade, total film and TV production in Los Angeles has plummeted by nearly 40 percent, according to data from the region’s official film office. Both big-name blockbusters and experimental indies have fled to other states and countries, looking for cheaper labor and more attractive tax incentives given studio cutbacks and rising costs.
The economic impact of this exodus extends far beyond actors, writers and directors. Hit hardest are the behind-the-scenes blue-collar workers — the makeup artists and set decorators, the drivers and dry cleaners — who were already struggling to survive in one of the nation’s most expensive metropolises.
Just as dispiriting is the downturn’s psychic toll. Hollywood is California’s most iconic export, as synonymous with the state as sunshine. It made Los Angeles a worldwide hub for artists and dreamers. But America’s fantasy factory is offshoring. Evidence is found in empty soundstages, prop houses selling off their stock, dwindling job opportunities.
The industry is responding with calls for tax breaks, as the Times pointed out:
Time was running out to pass new California bills in 2005 when a power broker in the State Capitol got a request from the action movie star in the governor’s office. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted lawmakers to give Hollywood studios $50 million in tax breaks to help prevent the movie industry from leaving.
But Democrats preferred to restore funding that had been cut from schools and support for disabled people. Republicans in the governor’s own party objected to the notion of assisting one industry over others. The effort fell flat, as did similar proposals over the next few years.
…
Times have certainly changed.
California lawmakers, most of them Democrats, approved a budget on Friday that includes $750 million to subsidize movie and television production, doubling the size of the state’s incentive program while making cuts elsewhere to help close its $12 billion deficit. A bill to make the tax credits available to more types of productions is expected to be approved in the coming days.
There are many reasons for Hollywood’s decline: high taxes in California, union strikes that crippled studios, and generous tax incentives everywhere.
And as Breitbart News has noted, one of the main reasons for Hollywood’s fall is the simple fact that studios persist in making “woke” cultural products that Americans simply do not want to watch, thanks to the political monoculture that persists despite economic imperatives.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Read the full article here