That’s up from the previous yearly subsidy of $100 million.

Other states are having second thoughts about subsidizing their own Tinseltowns. “Last week the Michigan House voted to end the state’s film incentive program, which has spent $500 million to lure movie makers into shooting projects in Detroit and elsewhere,” reported the Wall Street Journal.

Current Wolverine State subsidies are $39 million a year. Adjusting for Michigan’s 10 million population compared to California’s 39 million, the equivalent here would be $152 million.

According to the Journal, “Former Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm promoted the credit to create jobs and develop a permanent film industry.” Although born in Canada, Granholm was raised in California and started out with a Hollywood acting career that didn’t last long. She’s currently receiving a salary partly paid by California taxpayers as a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Granholm’s term in office, 2003-2011, was almost exactly concurrent with that of another California actor who supported film subsidies, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But as the Journal reported, there are problems with the subsidies:

“Michigan’s Senate Fiscal Agency found in 2010 that for every dollar the state spends on the program, it recoups 11 cents. There were 100 fewer film-industry jobs in Michigan in 2013 than there were in 2008, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data dug up by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s James Hohman and Jarrett Skorup. By the Michigan Film Office’s own report, the program didn’t create a single permanent job in 2013.”

“Meantime, the state has grappled with a $532 million shortfall in the general fund, due mostly to more than $9 billion in other corporate welfare commitments dished out under Gov. Granholm.”

Michigan, like California, generally is a Democratic state. It last voted for a Republican for president in 1988, the same as California. And it last voted for a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1994, compared to 1988 for California.

But after Granholm’s tenure, when she presided over the nation’s highest unemployment rate during the Great Recession, Michigan rebelled against Democratic rule for the state itself. Currently it is ruled by a Republican governor, Rick Snyder, and Republican-controlled Legislature.

Yet, the Journal reported, “The bill to end the movie moolah now heads to the Senate, where it could be scuttled by film-subsidy friendly Republicans, despite the GOP’s 27-11 majority. Even Governor Snyder, who has long opposed the film program, seems to be getting stage fright: Last week he told reporters that an abrupt end to the incentives wasn’t ‘the appropriate answer.’”

It may be that, despite the economics of the film subsidies, people can’t help being stagestruck.

By WAYNE LUSVARDI

California Gov. Jerry Brown may have met his moment of infamy on a Feb 1 TV show.  He said, “California is losing manufacturing jobs at a rate no faster than the rest of the country.”

Brown’s claim is not backed up by data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.  California lost manufacturing jobs at a higher rate than competing states.  Here are the percentage and absolute number of manufacturing job losses in competing states over the last decade:

Manufacturing Job Losses in Competing States

California lost 15 percentage points more manufacturing jobs than Nevada and 10 percentage points more than Texas.  More significantly, California lost 411,300 manufacturing jobs over the decade.  That is more than the 280,100 for Nevada, Texas, Oregon and Arizona combined.

Brown continued, “This is the place where Facebook started, where Hewlett-Packard started, where Steve Jobs built Apple Computer just a few miles from where we’re sitting. This is a place of innovation.”

But Apple and Hewlett Packard are companies that have out-sourced almost all their computer component manufacturing to China. In the 1970s, Jobs and his Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak scrounged parts for their early computers from the leftovers of HP and other manufacturing giants. They couldn’t do that nowadays unless they moved to China.

And Facebook wasn’t “started” in California. It was started at Harvard University. It only moved out here later because founder Mark Zuckerberg wanted to live and work among the top companies and geniuses of his industry. Hasn’t Brown seen “The Social Network“?

Facebook IPO

Brown mentioned Facebook because its IPO is expected to net a $500 million tax windfall for California’s coffers. But to be prosperous, a state needs to produce more than high-tech jobs for people with high IQs.

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates once said, “Nobody is qualified to become a statesman who is entirely ignorant of the problems of wheat.”

One might say that California’s politicians cannot be ignorant of the problems of manufacturing and claim to be qualified to find solutions to unemployment.

With the value of the dollar diluted by Federal Reserve policy, California could re-capture some industries from overseas.  But what is Gov. Brown doing to bring this about?

He continues to back the Bullet Train to Nowhere. And he’s implementing AB 32, the jobs-killing Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

Curiously, the program Brown appeared on, “The War Room,” is hosted by Jennifer Granholm, the former Michigan governor. During her time in office, her policies emptied the Great Lake State of manufacturing jobs, as Chrysler and GM went bankrupt. No wonder she didn’t press Brown on his anti-manufacturing policies.

When it comes to manufacturing, California needs leadership, not a smooth TV conversationalist who claims to model his policies on the ancient Greek ruler Aristides.