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Posted on 02/03/2006 7:31:57 PM PST by Brian Allen
When governments get in the business of business, there's no enormity they won't engage in. Say you want to attract more movie businesses to your country. So, hey, why not! Subsidize a movie or two or three.
After the "Lord of the Rings" success, though -- you know, Peter Jackson's trilogy of films based on Tolkien's trilogy of books -- you might've thought that New Zealand's government would sit back and just wait for more films to be filmed down under. Talk about getting all the publicity they could hope for.
So why give $25 million to Peter Jackson to film "King Kong" there? I don't want to sound anti-art -- or anti-ape, or anti-kiwi. I just can't help but notice that governments that start out wanting to promote this or that, end up by simply taking from poorer people and giving huge wads of money to much, much richer people.
Most arguments for government aid boil down to helping out the people who can't help themselves. Or investing in worthwhile projects that private investors can't or won't.
But in reality, the practice of government aid and investment always ends up with huge sums being wasted on people who are already successful and don't need help.
It's a pity: New Zealanders must endure their high taxes and regulations so that the government can make one of the world's most successful moviemakers that much richer.
This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
Squandering the confiscated lives energies of New Zealand's hardscrabble battlers to buy the occasional company of the country's Half-a-Billionaire film maker.
If ever Rodney Hide and ACT faced a challenge to their continued viability and credibility they have surely found a worthy one now in having this obscene squandering of New Zealand's taxpayers money reversed and recovered!
I'm Brian Allen.
You jokers should be all over this one, like flies on poo.
Blessings - Brian
Ever since I first had a taste of academic stuff in NZ when I came here about 15 years ago, the idea of NZ artistic talent seems to me is more like "artsy-fartsy leftist rubbish". Why do Kiwis regard these as national treasures??
Hmmm...my guess is that the NZ gov't is counting on the fact that the people aren't going to miss their tax money, and think that when the filmmaker comes to town and gives them chicken feed for pay as extras, and the film crew frequents their businesses, that they think they're actually gaining on the deal...
<< Well at least New Zealand has given America one prize gem: Rachel Hunter, who is now living in Los Angeles - my city. >>
More like me, the one prize gem AND Rachel Hunter.
Me -- the original and the best genuinely-hyphenated, legal-immigrant, AMERICAN-American, prize gem.
Who also, as an extra bonus, [When he is at home and looking out, Bob and Doughtyone, for FReeps - eg as of next Tuesday February 7 and for the next five months] lives in your city -- and mine -- Los Angeles.
<< .... the [New Zealand "arts' community's and New Zealand government's] idea of "artistic talent" seems to me is more like artsy-fartsy leftist rubbish. >>
The power lust, never forget, is a noxious weed and flourishes only in the vacant lots of empty minds. New Zealand's no-neck tongue-chewin' babblin' idiot-savant political poo-bahs and its artsy-fartsy leftist rubbishheap of artistic "talent" have their "tastes" in common with every government and with every "arts' community" in the world.
Witness the world's ugly-piled-upon-ugly gummint commissioned and/or subsidised and/or owned "art" pieces, exhibitions, galleries, buildings and edifices and, for further example, the peer accolades piled upon that jumped-up kung foo flick maker and sodomists' sensationalist, Ang Lee.
Go figger.
,,, Klark will stand on the platform for the average New Zealander but time and time again bankroll elitists while the highest interest rates in the developed world are fuelling a strong dollar that's killing our exporters and workers. Why is this? It's easy... Peter Jackson fits into the arts bracket and that's one of her big voting blocs. Funding approved.
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