2y ago

Tyler Perry’s Wealth Is Not Trickling Down to Black Residents of Atlanta, "Almost all of Atlanta’s residents have subsidized Tyler Perry’s personal wealth."

jacobin.com

Tyler Perry’s Wealth Is Not Trickling Down to Black Residents of Atlanta

53 comments

To be fair, no rich persons wealth significantly trickles down
- Yeah it feels kinda weird to single him out in a way that insinuates it’s because he’s black…
  
  I think it's more about the fact that he's pretending that he's lifting up the black people of Atlanta when in reality it's the opposite.
  Just like with every other billionaire pretending to be a philanthropic force in the world.
  
  I think the text tries to make the point that it doesn't work not because but despite him being black. The argument Perry and others make in this case is not one in the form of material benefits but rather moral ones. A member of a marginalized group makes it big, which is supposed to inspire others from this group. The point is that this form of trickle down economics works just as badly as the "regular" one, which is hardly at all.
- Money trickles only one way, up
  
  The modern economics of today would be like if moisture just kept gathering into clouds but it never rained.
- It trickles down to politicians and judges, but that's about it.
  
  That's just a temporary downward infusion to lubricate the mechanisms sending money back up.
This article is awful for 3 reasons. Unfortunately each reason is one of the main hot takes the article tries and there is nothing redeeming otherwise - so maybe four reasons if you wanna get meta
1: Tyler Perry being decently-successful in media does not mean he owes people anything. More to the point, it is impossible to quantify what one person's success means to another. Even if they announce it at a speech, you've got no way to show a casual pattern.
2: It lumps in every tax break but completely ignores the localized benefits of those tax breaks. Georgia offers tax breaks to films because it makes them money.
The industry in Georgia was boosted substantially by tax incentives introduced in 2002 and strengthened in 2008. Just in the fiscal year 2017 film and TV production had an economic impact in Georgia of $9.5 billion, while industry sources claim that the tax subsidy costs the state $141 million (2010). (Wikipedia)
3: Perry, per the article's own admission, is giving substantially to the community in terms of pure charity
Perry earned plenty of glowing national headlines earlier this year for his philanthropy in donating $750,000 to help low-income seniors in Atlanta as property taxes increased.
Doesn't really make sense to paint him as the bad guy here by any of the angles the article tries to take.
I don't even care for Perry much, but this article is just misleading crap.
- If Jacobin stopped publishing misleading crap they wouldn't have any articles to print in the first place.
I stopped reading when the bullshit got this strong:
The irony is that these liberals, in addition to a weak commitment to hiking taxes on the rich, have their own version of the theory.
- I feel like these people ask themselves at every slight annoyance "How could I blame his on liberals?". They're the types who'd criticize people making $75k a year for their wealth.
  
  Right? It's pretty braindead to generalize "liberals" like this. Like yeah if I had ever heard of this before this article my reaction would not have been "oh that's great! Go black capitalism!!!"
I'm looking forward to the future film he'll be making about himself and this incident: Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry, a Tyler Perry Film.
- So much potential. Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry 2: Electric Tyler Perry: 2 Tyler 2 Perry.
why would you expect anything different? "trickle down" economics was always a scam.

53 comments