Richard Harmon over at Politik (via his daily newsletter) reports that the government put $30 million into Auckland Film Studio upgrades via the Infrastructure Reference Group, and that Auckland Council also threw in some money.
Make you weep. They'd have done better by burning the money. Zero joke.
Every dollar spent on that, given the state of the labour market, has pulled a construction worker away from more valuable tasks. How do we know the other tasks are more valuable? They didn't need to be subsidised.
It's not just a waste of money, it's a destruction of real resources relative to what could have been done instead.
Worse, the infrastructure goes to support an industry that only exists at current scale by virtue of gigantic government subsidies to international film production.
Had the government burned the money instead, it might have at least reduced inflation by a tiny amount.
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