(Editor's note: Below is the written testimony of Michael D. LaFaive, director of the Morey Fiscal Policy Initiative at the Mackinac Center, submitted today to the State Senate Finance Committee.) (more ...)
I wish you could get accurate information and not twist it to your ends. Granted models can be self serving, but when 60% of money that would not have come to Michigan lands here that is a model worth keeping. I just finishing working on a MI feature. There were over 70 vendors who benefited from our film crews, the company and the work. Like the Ypsilanti coffee shop, Office supply store, 6 Hotels, The hardware store in Depot town and gas stations from Detroit to Jackson. The info you are requesting is financial data that most corporations would not supply for you. There is plenty of information out there for the asking - it just doesn't fit your viewpoint.
Talk about self-serving models, how about one that calculates the benefits of a program, ignores the costs, and on that basis declares it a rip-roaring success?
Here's what you ignore: If we did not take millions of dollars from existing Michigan families and businesses to hand over to film companies for temporary productions, then how many jobs would all they all have created? REAL jobs - not ones that depend on the state paying 42 percent of their expenses? What's the "multiplier effect" on that figure? History, theory and every independent empirical investigation in the economic journals demonstrates that the latter figure is MUCH higher, and is sustainable, too. This is the most economically illiterate program every foisted on Michigan taxpayers by self-serving politicians wanting to look like they're "doing something" about our broken economy rather than really fixing the destructive tax, regulatory and labor regimes they have erected over the decades.
As for "requesting is financial data that most corporations would not supply for you," that is correct, but then "most corporations" aren't getting 42 percent of their expenses paid by taxpapayers, under a statute that explicitly says the information must be collected as a condition of getting the subsidy.
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3 comments:
Great job, Dr. LaFaive!
I wish you could have been here to testify to the Alaska Legislature when our state passed its incentive bill.
I am currently requesting public records from the Alaska Film Office and they have been denied. It is under appeal.
I sure wish we had a good policy center in Alaska.
Let's keep the dialogue going. When states engage in the film subsidy wars, the public loses.
Find out about the Alaska Film Incentive (subsidy) at
www.NoSubsidy.org
I wish you could get accurate information and not twist it to your ends. Granted models can be self serving, but when 60% of money that would not have come to Michigan lands here that is a model worth keeping. I just finishing working on a MI feature. There were over 70 vendors who benefited from our film crews, the company and the work. Like the Ypsilanti coffee shop, Office supply store, 6 Hotels, The hardware store in Depot town and gas stations from Detroit to Jackson.
The info you are requesting is financial data that most corporations would not supply for you. There is plenty of information out there for the asking - it just doesn't fit your viewpoint.
MPA -
Talk about self-serving models, how about one that calculates the benefits of a program, ignores the costs, and on that basis declares it a rip-roaring success?
Here's what you ignore: If we did not take millions of dollars from existing Michigan families and businesses to hand over to film companies for temporary productions, then how many jobs would all they all have created? REAL jobs - not ones that depend on the state paying 42 percent of their expenses? What's the "multiplier effect" on that figure? History, theory and every independent empirical investigation in the economic journals demonstrates that the latter figure is MUCH higher, and is sustainable, too. This is the most economically illiterate program every foisted on Michigan taxpayers by self-serving politicians wanting to look like they're "doing something" about our broken economy rather than really fixing the destructive tax, regulatory and labor regimes they have erected over the decades.
As for "requesting is financial data that most corporations would not supply for you," that is correct, but then "most corporations" aren't getting 42 percent of their expenses paid by taxpapayers, under a statute that explicitly says the information must be collected as a condition of getting the subsidy.
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