This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, October 8, 2015.

I'm Caleb Brown. Subsidies for motion pictures are a particularly wasteful form of corporate

welfare, but states in recent years have jumped on board to attract a famously

transient film industry.

Jarrett Scorup is a policy analyst at the Mackinaw Center in Michigan at the State Policy

Network's annual meeting in September, we discussed

how Michigan snuffed out film subsidies.

How much money has Michigan handed out in subsidies to film producers.

Our program began in 2008, and for the first three years,

it was uncapped.

So they were doing over $100 million a year.

And so the total amount since then,

475 million.

Uncapped.

What does it mean that say that a subsidy program is uncapped?

They could spend as much as they wanted.

And in Michigan, those were, I mean everywhere, but O-8, 2009, 2010 were particularly horrible years for the budget.

So they were, yeah, they could, the film office had discretion to subsidize films as much as they wanted.

And it was 400 million over, since 2008?

475 million.

So what could have brought it to an end when it was started during bad economic times?

Yeah, the bill, the total vote in the House and Senate in 2008 was 145 to 1. So it was unanimous in the House and there was one

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