Penny Arcade - Comic - Megalolopolis
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Penny Arcade - Comic - Megalolopolis
Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.
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Good on Coppola I guess for enjoying immense wealth to the point that burning a small nation states annual budgets on his pet projects is an achievable goal for him. This puts him in the same realm as FIFA when they released their own god awful film United Passions.
Not to get all trickle-down, but he didn't burn it, right? It went to other people. It's arguable that this is a far, far better outcome than it continuing to be locked up in a high priced vineyard.
At least this is a glorious flop. They probably spent a half billion dollars (after marketing) on The Flash.
I have friends who work in film. Something on this level is going to employ a lot of people -- exponentially more than just a director and star actors.
Even beyond that, this person made a piece of art that he wanted to make. That's exciting. Some of my favorite albums were from bands who had just gotten out of a contract. They self-financed their own music. The result was gloriously indulgent music created to satisfy themselves first and their fans second.
This looks like a chance to see the same process play out in film. It's an exciting concept, at least to me.
Heck, rich people spending money actually doesn't bother me at all. Even yachts! I mean, emissions and running over fish and stuff is bad. But the concept of "rich person spends their money" is not offensive to me. I'd rather they spend it on frivolities (which do, in fact, employ people at least) than sit on it or, as is most common, use it to extract yet more wealth from other people.
Better that people not be super rich, sure. But if they are? I do not care one bit if they want to fund dumb movies or whatever.
Flops are a net wealth transfer to the workers (even the wealthy actors are worth couch change to the funding class).
Eat the rich, one bad move at a time.
https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/francis-ford-coppola-groping-megalopolis-video-1235029909/
He wasn't just "spending his money making art", he was doing typical rich creep things.
Yeah, I'd heard about that. I don't think anyone here thinks Coppola should be celebrated. That this is a megaflopolis makes that a lot easier, of course.
And I'm pretty sure terrible people are going to be terrible, no matter how they are (or are not) spending their money.
I'm afraid I don't know enough about the current movie or anything surrounding it to offer any further insight, just thought that I'd point out that Mr. Coppola has some some prior form in "Fuck it, Imma toss my money into making the movie I want to make".
An Economics textbook had a historical example of a local government that decided to tax yachts (it was a coastal locality that made boats), figuring that the only the wealthy would be affected.
The wealthy quickly decided no one really needs a yacht and some of the area's boat makers ended up laying off their middle class employees instead.
I also have a friend that spent a few years working on a yacht after getting burned out of lab work. She ended up paying off her grad school student loans much faster than if she'd stuck to lab work between the salary and tips from bartending for various celebrities.
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I'm immediately skeptical of a wealthy person having a realization like this. The more likely scenario feels like they just incorporate in a tax haven with a company that owns the yacht that they had built in another tax haven and loans it to them for a nominal fee.
In this case, I don't think it's as complicated as that as
1) if that kind of thing happened, the companies building the yachts still would have maintained business and not had to lay off workers and
2) As I learned from my friend that worked on a yacht, people who don't have their own can rent one from someone that does because no one who owns one uses it all the time. A lot of her best paydays were from when various celebrities rented out the yacht for parties and she shifted from normal duties to bartending. The tax was only on the purchase of yachts, not their use, so anyone put off by the new expense still had pretty easy access to one if they still wanted it.
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The way I always heard it was that when governments try to tax yachts, rich people just fly to other countries to buy their yachts.
I could also see that. I forget when the example from the textbook happened but it was also more concerned with the local effects of such a tax, not the yacht market as a whole.
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Which is - in general - why trickle down ultimately doesn't work. Or why "trickle" is an appropriate name. Though "crumb tumble" might be a better one.
The only thing "good" about rich people buying yachts is if the alternative is that rich people won't spend their money and will just accumulate it. They're going to accumulate no matter what, so it's better that they accumulate it and spend it. Taxes are a good way to ensure that, though rich people are always going to seek a way to game the system. That's a big part of how they get and stay rich.
Reminds me of one of my absolute favorite passages he wrote many, many years ago.