The View From 1776

Radical, left-wing actor Alec Baldwin (who unhappily failed to honor his threat to leave the country when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000) tells us unequivocally that taxes matter.  Liberal-progressive-socialists, nonetheless, continue to act as if raising taxes will have no effect on businesses and investors who have enough savings to fund job creation via industrial and technical expansion and innovation.

A Wall Street Journal editorial quotes Mr. Baldwin’s reactions to proposed tax hikes in New York:

The actor recently rebuked New York Governor David Paterson for threatening to try to help close the state’s $7 billion budget deficit by canceling a 35% tax credit for films shot in the Big Apple.

“I’m telling you right now,” Mr. Baldwin declared, “if these tax breaks are not reinstated into the budget, film production in this town is going to collapse, and television is going to collapse and it’s all going to go to California.” Well, well. Apparently taxes do matter, at least when it comes to filming “30 Rock” in Manhattan.

Believe it or not, Mr. Baldwin’s views are shared across the movie industry, which is pleading in state capitals across the country for most-favored-tax status. Hollywood productions are highly mobile and can film just about anywhere. So they have taken to shopping around the country—and the world—for the most lucrative tax avoidance deal.

This, in a nutshell, explains the phenomenon, so much berated by liberal-progressive-socialists, of outsourcing business to foreign countries, as well as moving to low-tax and right-to-work states from heavily-taxed, tightly-regulated, and heavily-unionized states like New York, Michigan, and California. 

Hollywood doesn’t give a damn about the local impact on jobs if it pulls filming operations out of New York City.  But when non-leftwingers seek more welcoming and more cost-effective locales, liberal-progressive-socialists, despite their affection for moral relativism, decry it as immorality.

How does morality enter the picture, at least for businesses other than Hollywood, TV, and other mainstream media? 

Socialist doctrine tells us that the economy by right should be socialized, that is, controlled and regulated collectively.  The implication is that business success is not attributable to entrepreneurial or managerial ability, but to the state-planning of intellectual councils.  You don’t really own your business; you are merely running it for the benefit of the political state.

This is the the underlying doctrine that informs President Obama’s plans to socialize as much of the economy as possible, beginning with healthcare and extending to support for labor union thuggery to eliminate secret ballots among workers subject to unionization campaigns.