Another Race To the Bottom Amongst States

Bribing movie producers to film in their states.  A study in California demonstrates incentives don't pay for themselves:

One thing Hollywood has been very good at over the last few years is extracting tax incentives from states to move production around the country.

But another thing has always been clear about these incentives: They don't pay for themselves. In state after state, objective, independent studies have shown that they invariably run in the red, returning pennies and dimes to state treasuries for every buck handed out to producers.
Now California's independent Legislative Analyst's Office has added to the data bank. In a study released Wednesday, it calculates that for every dollar California spends on the $100-million annual film subsidy it created in 2009, the state treasury gets back 65 cents. 

The LAO does California's taxpayers a further service by debunking a key study that purported to prove the contrary. One is a supposedly "independent" study by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. which, as we observed at the time of its release in July 2011, was quietly funded by the Motion Picture Assn. of America, whose members collect all these lavish subsidies. The LAO shows that the LAEDC's work, which has claimed to find that the state's Hollywood subsidies return more in economic benefit than they cost, was every bit as slipshod as we reported.
Although a few states have debarked from the Hollywood handout gravy train, 37 states still offer incentives. That has put tremendous pressure on California to do the same in order to hang on to its role as the nation's center of film and television production; a measure to expand the state's subsidy and extend it through 2022 is currently making its way through the Legislature.

Corporations and movie producers have been able to get states to bid amongst themselves for how badly to screw their own residents to bring in jobs or, in this extremely stupid example, movies.  A moratorium on tax incentives would be a good thing for the body politic, but politicians, especially Republicans, prefer to help out the folks who don't need any assistance while citizens see failing infrastructure and less responsive government services.  It's lose-lose for you and I, and win-win for corporations and their political lackeys.