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How would a politician from western NC explain using general fund money to bolster Wilmington's economy? Then there is the current controversy about the Hollywood crowd.
Wilmington is far from the only popular place for filming in NC.
Western NC in particular benefited with the filming of Dirty Dancing, Last of the Mohicans, Hunger Games...
After graduating from UNCSA my daughter worked steadily in Winston Salem for about a year. Two movies, commercials. When incentives went away, all that dried up. She’s moved to NYC where she is working constantly. The person on the street has no idea of the number of jobs a production creates. AND good paying jobs, too,
How would a politician from western NC explain using general fund money to bolster Wilmington's economy? Then there is the current controversy about the Hollywood crowd.
Yeah, there are a ton of movies that have been filmed in western NC. I'm sure the folks there were sorry to see the jobs go, too. Read that WRAL article I linked and you'll find that they talked to a food crew in Charlotte.
Why not just lower taxes across the board to be more competitive to all industries and cut spending? Why must "incentives" be targeted?
Because no matter how low taxes are, job creators are in the driver's seat and demand incentives. Look at Texas...the state has an ultra low 1% state corporate income tax (and the effective rate is usually much lower), but is the largest provider of economic development incentives. Incentives are simply a reality.
you could also look at incentives as an investment.
If you invest $1 in a venture with a very high-probability of getting the $1 back (incentives that are repaid, unless the company goes belly up), and a projected return of $1.20 (20%) per year ....that's not an investment that you'd be happy with?
Why should the taxpayer subsidize throwing gobs of money at an industry that creates no consistent economic base and only exists to chase the lowest bidder?
Why not spend money on business that place signifigant infrastructure in the state and have incentives to stay and be good partners
John Oliver covered economic development incentives last night, with a specific section on the film industry incentives starting at 9:34 in to the clip:
Spoiler alert - economic development incentives as set up today are generally a net negative, and especially given the portable nature of film sets the incentives for the tv and film industries are especially useless. I'm definitely no fan of McCrory or the NCGA, but getting rid of these incentives was fine by me.
Well, it was a poor political move by McCrory as it was one of the things that probably cost him the election. Remember Trump won NC, so folks voted for both Trump and also for Cooper because he wanted to bring back film subsidies and get rid of HB2. I talked to Republicans in Wilmington who voted for both who specifically cited the film subsidies as why they didn't vote for McCrory.
It looks like the new movie, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, was filmed mostly/entirely in western NC, around Sylva, Maggie Valley and Asheville. I realize it is a "low budget" movie, but found it interesting they didn't film it in Georgia, I guess they really liked the locations in North Carolina, even with the low tax credits as compared to GA.
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