The Creative Class rises, then emigrates to Bondi beach.

From How the GOPs Anti-elitism could ruin America's economy:

...the lion’s share of benefits from The Lord of the Rings is likely to accrue not to the United States but to New Zealand. Next, with a rather devastating symbolism, Jackson will remake King Kong in Wellington, with a budget running into upwards of $150 million.

Peter Jackson’s power play hasn’t been mentioned by any of the current candidates running for president. Yet the loss of U.S. jobs to overseas competitors is shaping up to be one of the defining issues of the 2004 campaign. And for good reason. Voters are seeing not just a decline in manufacturing jobs, but also the outsourcing of hundreds of thousands of white-collar brain jobs—everything from software coders to financial analysts for investment banks. These were supposed to be the “safe” jobs, for which high school guidance counselors steered the children of blue-collar workers into college to avoid their parents’ fate.

But the loss of some of these jobs is only the most obvious—and not even the most worrying—aspect of a much bigger problem. Other countries are now encroaching more directly and successfully on what has been, for almost two decades, the heartland of our economic success — the creative economy.

Very good article encapsulating the folly of traditional economic and business thinking in the face of a world fast learning the lessons of growth and ambition--and in many cases, walking the talk better than we do. Read it, it's about much more than the movie business.

Richard Florida is an Economic Development specialist whose 2001 book, Rise of the Creative Class, factually and in great detail finally took the knees out from under the traditional urban revitalization view: Build it and they will come.

They didn't, don't, can't, won't come.

You've seen the syndrome: Big stadia, gallerias, Biotech parks and incubators, big-box blackfields (Wal-Mart-ish aircraft hangars for retail, surrounded by acres of asphalt desert with shopping cart tumbleweeds).

These, and similar Frydeas* are the embodiment of the shortsighted "crown-jewel", "silver bullet" mentality of urban politicians and developers without opposable thumbs. And they fail with depressing regularity while siphoning off tax revenue and small business bases, thereby strangling community viability. You might call them the ultimate triumph of ego over any understanding of the food chain that is economic systems: Lions get the pampering. Gazelles, rabbits, mice and ants get bupkis because they aren't "sexy". In the end, the lions die of starvation too. Ditto corporate America, ditto the military, ditto you name it.

(If I seem a tad animated on this subject, I am. I love it. I love shortsighted, left-brain executives--I wouldn't have a company otherwise.)

In this article, Florida wisely sees a corrolary for the nation: We're not just subsidizing short sighted business ideas based only on influence, not merit, we're exporting our future. Read it, he's good.

*soon to to be revealed in Fouro's "Executive Lexicon and Big Book of Business Wisdom"