The Charlotte News & Observer has a ridiculously long ad from the government trying to get me to buy welfare for movie stars. I mean, what could be more valuable than running into a famous person? The article tells us Asheville is a “home base” for actors, but they often have to go out of town to get work.

Once again, the logic of today teaches I am mean-spirited for saying I think limited resources should be divided more in favor of parents trying to feed their hungry ragamuffins. Just about everybody else seems to think we can tax the grocery budgets away from the working poor to incentivize Hollywood types to come to Asheville. They’ll buy sunglasses, champagne, and cigarettes from us, and the money will multiply out the yin-yang. How dare I hate children enough to deprive movie stars of their next Acapulco vacation?

Way back in April, the JLF published a report that showed NC’s film industry is getting nineteen cents back on the dollar for its subsidies. The findings were based on a report that analyzed the work of an NCSU pusher who argued the film subsidies were creating well over $10 for every dollar invested.

McHugh and Boardman discuss several errors in the report, including that it:

  • understates the cost of the Film Credit by almost $24 million,
  • overstates the amount of personal income taxes paid by film production workers,
  • overstates the sales tax revenue generated by purchases made by film productions, and
  • significantly overstates the tax revenue generated when film workers spend their earnings.

They also raise questions about the report’s estimation of the average salary of workers, its calculations over income and corporate taxes, and its assumptions of tourism effects.

The article then goes on to discuss opportunity costs. I still haven’t recovered from the scolding I received from a respected luminary in a public meeting maybe a year ago: The opportunity costs would be that we would lose out on all this money if we don’t offer the incentives. That is, we get our input/output model to hypermultiply by ignoring subtractive elements and then, like some kind of girl in a raspberry beret, we go in through the out door.

If, after that, you’re not jazzed enough over government’s economic multipliers, the local daily is providing a recap for the year.