Taxes for Porn

The taxpayers of Tennessee should be outraged to discover that $34,500 of their money is being spent to subsidize the 37th annual Nashville Film Festival.

And while some may get angry at taxpayer money being used for sexually explicit films (like "Hung", in which lesbian friends experiment with penises), the real issue is why taxpayer money is being used at all. Drew Johnson, of the Tennessee Center For Policy Research, absolutely nails it with:

Films considered by some to be sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable garner greater public outrage for being shown at a taxpayer-supported film festival. Yet all taxpayers should be incensed that their tax money is spent to support art of any kind.

Government funding of the arts is inconsistent with a free society. Art—like all other goods and services—should exist in a market environment. If art is of value to a society, people will buy it, listen to it, watch it and enjoy it. It should not be a role of government to tax individuals to support art.

Eliminating government funding of the arts means that taxpayers would have more money to attend films that they personally choose to support. Instead, the state forces taxpayers to support films like Brothers of the Head, a mockumentary about Siamese twin glam rockers. This just goes to prove that the state government has no business spending our money on most of the things they spend it on.

Precisely.

Technorati Tags: Government Pork, Government Waste, Abusing the Taxpayer, Tennessee Politics, Film Industry.

 

Posted on Sunday at 6:21 PM in category Taxes
Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

---