Back in the late ’70s, my brother – a master woodworker in addition to having several patents for speaker designs – did a lot of custom cabinet work in the Los Angeles area, mostly in Beverly Hills. While he was Beverly Hillbilly-ing around, he got to see some interesting places, and I remember him telling me the one time he drove down to Hollywood to see the sights. He described Hollywood, about 1977 if memory serves, succinctly: “It’s a dump.”
Then, in 2007-2008, I worked on a nearly two-year consulting project involving setting up and validating a new manufacturing facility, and one weekend, I decided to see Hollywood for myself. Later, I told my wife: “It’s a dump.”
These days, Los Angeles in general is suffering from the “It’s a dump” syndrome, and now we see that, like many of California’s productive people, the film industry and the glitterati that work in it are packing up and leaving.
Hollywood insiders have warned that Los Angeles is at risk of becoming “the next Detroit” amid fears that the city’s decades-long status as the capital of TV and film could come to a swift end if entertainment productions do not receive immediate tax relief incentives.
Amid a sharp rise in the number of celebrities moving out of L.A. to places like Texas and Florida, industry workers have now raised the alarm about the stark decline in the number of entertainment projects being carried out in Hollywood and throughout California.
These fears were the focus of an April 14 town hall in which lawmakers and movie producers pushed for changes to the state’s entertainment production tax incentive in order to cover up to 35% of qualified expenditures, while also widening the range of productions that would receive these subsidies.
These all, frankly, seem like band-aid approaches. California’s problems are larger than just fiddling with margins to try to keep the film industry alive. The highest gas prices in the country, some of the highest taxes in the country, the most homeless and the most illegal aliens; all these have rendered the once-Golden State into a much less pleasant place to live than it was just a few years ago.
Want to make California an attractive place it was? It could be. The state still has a wonderful variety of scenery, a salubrious climate, and ample resources. To make it more attractive again, California needs to do two things: Stop rewarding failure and punishing success. For crying out loud, when you’ve lost Hollywood, what do you have left?
Lower tax rates. Cut regulations. Get the bums off the streets. Work with the Trump administration to get the illegal aliens repatriated, and for the love of Pete, stop giving all the illegals free health care at the taxpayers’ expense. California’s tried the other way. It’s clearly not working.
See Also: Jay Leno Speaks up at CA Capitol, Hoping to Save the Industry for Classic Cars From Hollywood’s Fate
George Clooney Talks More About Dems’ Split With Biden, and Which Democrat He Wants to Run for 2028
As for any Hollywood liberals thinking of leaving California and who may be, like John Wayne and Stewart Granger, looking north to Alaska, I can only say this: The winters! Oh, no, the winters! Weeks below zero, snow measured in feet, twenty hours of darkness! On, no, the winters!
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