May 22, 2019 7:13 AM
Morning Reads – Wednesday, May 22, 2019
- New Coke is coming back, but more importantly, so is Stranger Things.
- Microwaves are bad. Learn to use an oven. Especially if you are operating a giant radio telescope…
- Alabama families are doing their part to adopt children in need.
- Who wants to buy some stuff Cobb County doesn’t want anymore?
- Consider this dodging a bullet. Also, can you use “pulls out” and “abortion” in the same headline without giggling?
- I was shocked to hear the spicy chicken sandwich is not Chic-fil-a’s highest rated product. Shame on all of you.
- UGA’s Innovation Gateway has had an economic impact of $322m in Georgia, and $531m across the county.
- Targeted antibiotics could reverse antibiotic resistance?
- The other Georgia gets a German owned solar panel manufacturing facility.
- Speaking of livers.
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TheDeepDark
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Hurricane Michael’s toll on Georgia vegetation in one satellite image.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2019/05/17/hurricane-michaels-toll-on-georgia-vegetation-in-one-satellite-image/#7c516106380e
The Hollywood boycott and the Innovation Gateway has me thinking.
1. Cancel the tax credit.
2. Implement a Democratic idea from the 1990s: create a high speed rail line connecting Mercer, Georgia Tech/Georgia State, /Emory/CDC, UGA and MCG.
3. Result: a research corridor to compete with Semiconductor Row in Texas, Research Triangle Park in North Carolina and the I-4 Corridor in Florida.
Would make the revenue and jobs generated by Hollywood spare change AND kill the idea that out of staters who use us as a tax shelter a few weeks a year get to dictate our laws. Which is akin to visitors to Disneyland boycotting California demanding socon legislation.
This should motivate the GOP to pass this idea the next legislative session. As for the Democrats, remember it was their idea to begin with and is a very good one.
Oh yeah. Replace the Hollywood tax credit with an alternative energy tax credit for entrepreneurs in that area who want to set up shop here. Getting the next Tesla battery gigafactory is much better than propping up shows on streaming networks and basic cable that no one is ever going to watch anyway.
I appreciate your idea of attracting another good industry to the state.
Let me add my thoughts about the film industry. The industry benefits tens of thousands of GA residents and business that receive work and economic gain from employment and purchases of our goods and services. These workers and businesses pay state income tax property taxes and other taxes. Many industry workers from CA, LA, NC and FL have permanently moved here because the work is here. Even temporary out of towners pay for for their own lodging, food and other essentials (usually with a nice allowance from the production.)
This is not “out of staters who use us as a tax shelter a few weeks a year”. Episodic TV production sets up shop for 6-10 months a year. Features average 3-6 months a year. The incentive only applies to instate labor, purchases and rentals. Many productions never get the full 30% credit back for various reasons. The billions spent each year in GA overshadows the small incentive given back. Can a research industry create the same benefit? I don’t think so, so don’t be so quick to end the film incentive. I do think the research industry is another important employer to develop. I also encourage high use transit in all forms (except those pesky scooters, LOL).
We have lots of production for streaming, traditional network and features due to the high competition for subscription channels to get viewers who are cable-cord-cutters.
They believe in building a library of content for this new content delivery model. Apparently they believe enough people will watch these shows.
A few whiners aren’t dictating our laws. Business and money talks. Campaign contributions buy favorable legislation and lap dog legislators willing to do their bidding.
via Wkikipedia (I know, apologies) In fiscal year 2017 film and TV production had an economic impact in Georgia of $9.5 billion. According to the Georgia Department of Economic Development:
There are more than 5,000 individual technicians and other workers in Georgia
The average number of local employees on a medium budget feature film is about 150-175
On a larger budget production, there are about 200-250 local employees
The average feature film budget is $41.7 million
The average amount (below-the-line) of feature film budget spent in a state is 60% – 70%. This is higher for locally produced projects.
Apologies for the old link and old stats, but here are some more details, and some old concerns you may like. https://www.ajc.com/blog/radiotvtalk/another-record-breaking-year-for-georgia-film-and-455-productions-billion-direct-spending/lWsXHKRljoebL2I09KAwqO/
What makes you think high tech researchers are going to be any more willing to come here than “Hollywood” types.
It is funny that you think that all or even most tech workers and researchers are socially liberal activists. But not surprising because the media only focuses on Silicon Valley – precisely because their preference for the politics of the Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg and Tim Cook crowd – to the exclusion of everyone else. Truth is that the Texas high tech sector preceded Silicon Valley, was actually more prominent than Silicon Valley for decades and to this day is #2 only to Silicon Valley in breath and depth. But the media paying attention to it would mean A) spending time in places in Texas other than Austin and B) admitting that there is more to Texas than oil and poverty … that some of those fundamentalists actually have research degrees, high paying jobs and stuff. That Baylor (a – gasp! – Baptist college!) and Texas Christian University and Southern Methodist University are all in Texas and each have better engineering schools than exist in many states.
Not just Texas. There are a ton of tech jobs in Utah also. And I already mentioned Research Triangle Park (North Carolina) and the I-4 Corridor (central Florida). For the latter, the Florida Institute of Technology is considered one of the most conservative colleges in the country and gets funding from some leading conservative philanthropists. So no, the tech industry does not have the rigid ideological conformity of Hollywood or the media. And it is exactly because of this that Georgia and other conservative states shouldn’t wed their economic futures to industries that are hostile to their politics and culture. Let Hollywood continue to invest in California and New York while we use our economic incentives to attract employers and industries that don’t mind having to share their country with Baptists and Methodists. As well as those who believe that if it has a heartbeat, brain waves, dreams, learns, plays and develops a distinct personality – all of which occurs at the fetal stage and some of this was proven by researchers at Georga State University a few years ago, and no GSU is no hotbed of pro life activism but quite the opposite … it was part of a developmental psychology study aimed at correlating neo-natal care with early childhood education – just might be something worthy of granting legal consideration and protection to because you know science.
Nonsense.
You start with a false premise and go off the rails from there.
Who says there is a “rigid ideological conformity” in Hollywood?
Who said tech workers are socially liberal?
YOU are the one that seems obsessed with the geography/politics connection.
You just can’t make sweeping generalizations like that and then try to draw some specific conclusion from it. Unless you have data.
Is the NCAA socially liberal? They threatened to pull the tournament from NC over the bathroom bill.
While we’re canceling things how about the billions in taxes imposed on rate payers for a nuclear power plant that most likely never power a light bulb. And cancel the guaranteed profits on the cost overuns created by the monoploy? Can we cancel Go Fish”? Shouldn’t we also cancel the Port Tax Credits too?
Pick your boogeyman, I’ll pick mine!
I supposed you missed my mention of “tax credits for alternative energy entrepreneurs.” You won’t find a bigger fan of ending Georgia Power’s “regulated monopoly” status than me, and for doing the same with municipal cable companies. But look, any employer or industry that is hostile to our voters and the politicians that they elect because they can’t handle that the entire country isn’t New York and Los Angeles, or that New York and Los Angeles can’t run the entire country by fiat, then yeah we should pull any economic incentive that allows them to relocate here and tell us how terrible and backwards we are, what we should believe and how we should live our lives. They are still free to come live and work here, but let them do it on their own dime and not without or tax incentives like everybody else.
New York Times so you may hit a paywall. The headline says it all though. Our country is so damaged.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/opinion/alabama-law-abortion.html
The only thing that headline says to me is “clickbait’.
Yes, even the NYT does it.
It’s an opinion column. So yeah, the heading could be attention grabbing. How about “A State That is Dead Last in Education Doesn’t Give a S**t About Saving Children.”
getting the new coke isn’t going to be easy, it’s not going to be in kroger next to the regular coke…but i am thrilled that stranger things is returning…
The series is rumored to have five seasons total.
Day 22 since the meeting when it was reported Trump would three weeks later outline his ideas on how to pay for a $2 trillion infrastructure plan..
It doesn’t take three weeks to determine that the Chinese will be paying for it, since we can use the tariff money that the Chinese are paying. Plan B is to print more money to give to the rich who in their beneficence will trickle it down on public infrastructure.
Some Trumpsters don’t understand they’re paying the tariffs or think printing money is another Trump promise dept. The rest go along because the GOP can’t afford to alienate its dimwits.
add borrowing money from China, to pay (SOCIALISM) bailouts to farmers screwed out of income.