The Tragic Ironies of Capitalism: A Love Story

I am delighted to discover that my favorite source for celebrity news, Perez Hilton, is also a source for state public policy. Yesterday on his blog, he reported that Michael Moore had been approved to receive a taxpayer subsidy for his 2009 film about the financial crises, Capitalism: A Love Story, through Michigan’s production incentives program.

Hilton asks, “Greedy Or A Coincidence?”

I respond “hypocritical,” largely for the following two reasons:

(1) Moore is doing exactly what he is condemning in his film: accepting taxpayer money.

In the film, he assails Wall Street executives for their greed and for accepting bailout cash, but apparently he is not opposed to accepting tax credits himself. From a Fox News article on the subject:

Any amount of taxpayer subsidy is a potential black eye for Moore, who argued emphatically in “Capitalism: A Love Story” that Wall Street banks and other big companies didn’t deserve the bailout money they received from the federal government as the economy was tanking.

(2) Moore was vehemently opposed to film production incentives such as tax credits before he was a recipient.

At a conference in July 2008, Moore said what I’ve been saying all along on this blog:

“These are large multinational corporations — Viacom, GE, Rupert Murdoch — that own these studios,” said Moore at the Traverse City event. “Why do they need our money, from Michigan, from our taxpayers, when we’re already broke here? I mean, they play one state against another, and so they get all this free cash when they’re making billions already in profits. What’s the thinking behind that?”