Los Angeles receives a lesson, neglects to actually learn anything

For decades Los Angeles has been dealing with a problem called "runaway production", which means that Hollywood has been fleeing the high tax, high regulatory, high union environment of Los Angeles for more business friendly states, like Louisiana, and countries like Bulgaria... Yes that's right, it's so expensive to shoot movies and TV in L.A. that it's actually cost effective to ship an entire production to... lovely Bulgaria.

The solution is obvious, lower taxes and reduce regulations to lure production back to the city. But in the Liberal ideological bubble that is Los Angeles, the obvious solution is like garlic to a vampire. 

But there's good news...the rich Hollywood folks who really run this town (the politicians are nothing but their own personal paid employees) are, apparently, crazy but not stupid. Last year L.A. Government was successfully lobbied to change the tax environment to make it more attractive to its Hollywood patrons, and the results were entirely predictable. Production came roaring back to Los Angeles. According to Variety, production days in the city are up 54% over the same period last year. That's amazing. Imagine the same thing happening to, say, the auto industry in Detroit. A city is apt to be utterly transformed by an increase in business like that.

But sadly, this is not a lesson Los Angeles will learn. This city is simply not interested in reducing taxes or regulations because they aren't interested in giving up any measure of control over the lives of their citizens... improvements to their economic well being be damned.

If creating a friendly tax environment can fix the movie business, it can fix any business. Sadly, no other industry has lobbyists as powerful as Studio Heads, Network Chiefs and JJ Abrams. And so, the broader California economy will continue to tank, and those who can leave will continue to do so until Los Angeles is populated only by the ultra rich and the desperately poor.

Our city Poiticians know the answers. They know how to fix this. But they simply aren't willing to give up the power that high taxes and burdensome regulations grant them over our lives. And so we will continue to suffer.

The message to Los Angeles' dwindling middle class is "suck it."

Good luck with that.