Mayor Bill de Blasio could learn something about economics from LA’s Mayor Eric Garcetti.
Garcetti has learned that the left-leaning Hollywood moguls who claim they support unions and higher taxes hypocritically choose to shoot their movies and TV shows where labor costs are lower and tax breaks are given.
Only one of the 45 big-budget feature films released in 2012 and 2013 was shot exclusively in California. In the past eight years, that state’s share of the one-hour TV series market has declined from 64 percent to 28 percent.
California’s loss of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in runaway production has been gained by places like Louisiana, Georgia and Canada.
“This is about jobs for carpenters, electricians, makeup artists — good jobs that leave enough over at the end of the month to save for retirement, save for the kids’ college and to spend in our neighborhoods,” Ken Ziffren, Garcetti’s new film and TV czar, said on Monday.
De Blasio might consider such consequences before making New York less attractive for business by increasing taxes and labor costs (with his proposals for a minimum wage hike and paid sick days, for instance).
Garcetti realizes the bureaucracy is part of the problem and promises that Ziffren “will be aggressive about streamlining government so red tape doesn’t contribute to driving production away.”