Look at that photo that accompanies my column. My life is good, in large part because when you’re a George Clooney look-alike, well, life is good.

I’m not saying it’s fair. I don’t quite understand why a guy like me gets all the hot girls and the premier column-writing gigs, just because of the way I look.

I’m part of a larger trend that distorts social and business relationships. The academic research is clear: Those of us who are taller and prettier and hotter get better jobs and more money, and we tend to win Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat.

Even entire groups that are perceived to be super-cute (imagine a Cohen family picnic) can benefit from the good will that accrues to those who belong on the cover of People magazine.

Even sophisticated public policy can be influenced by just another pretty face or two. Ponder the weird over-enthusiasm with which Massachusetts has lusted over the film industry, riddled as it is with lots of pretty faces.

The state legislators have almost forgotten how important they used to think it was to entice and recruit ugly, awkward cancer researchers and computer-chip dorks to open up shop in the Boston-Cambridge colossus. That can’t be compared to being pecked on the cheek by a Hollywood starlet in thanks for a generous tax credit – all in the name of “economic development.”

Gov. Patrick, who will never be asked to host the Academy Awards, actually proposed cutting back on the tax credit for the film industry this year, on the theory that the butcher, baker and candlestick maker – all way too ugly to ever get tax credits – might get cranky in a recession if their tax money was being doled out to movie stars.

He’s a very silly governor. The legislature’s Revenue Committee voted 8-0 to retain the tax credit, as is, with the understanding that committee members will soon be asked to appear as space-alien extras in an upcoming science fiction thriller.

The Take Away

Most of the states play the game to some extent, even though returns on their tax-credit investments are paltry. And as two Northeastern University professors pointed out in an essay in the Boston Globe, most of the film production jobs that are being subsidized are transient – despite all the political blah, blah, blah about the growth of an “industry.”

As with any of the major economic development slush funds and tax credits popping up in the various states, there are, inevitably, boosters around and about to tout the “multiplier effect” and come up with dubious claims about jobs increased and revenue raised.

Iowa is still reeling from an honest, detached audit of its film credit apparatus, which was an embarrassment of waste, fraud and abuse.

What remains somewhat fuzzy in the competition for film production bragging rights are the criteria to be top dog. If tax breaks were the only thing that mattered to the film executives (who pretend that tax breaks make the big difference, as they wander the country, putting one state up against another), then economic theory suggests that one jurisdiction would eventually settle on zero – that is, tax free – and win all the film work.

In fact, the film work continues to scatter, in large part because the tax breaks, while certainly alluring, aren’t usually the deal breaker.

MovieMaker magazine’s list of the best cities for independent film producers (which presumably are more focused on penny-pinching tax savings than are Hollywood blockbusters) shows the top five as New York (because it is New York), Los Angeles (because it is Los Angeles), Austin, Texas (because Austin is cool), Albuquerque (because Albuquerque is cool, in an artsy-craftsy, desert-oasis sort of way) and Shreveport, La. (for reasons that are unclear).

Although philosopher-kings don’t thrive in the economic development game, there are the occasional voices that suggest state governments should not be in the business of picking and choosing favored industries; that if you want to be a business magnet, lower your taxes, tidy up your regulatory environment – and then get out of the way, as businesses make rational decisions about where to locate.

I know. B-O-R-I-N-G. Bring on those hot Hollywood chicks – and that Clooney guy who looks like Cohen.