While I am busily trying to motivate myself to write, here are some excellent articles that have been sitting in my newsreader for weeks just waiting to be shared.
A great article on the economics of productivity, academia, and how it relates to Mozart and Baumol’s Disease here from the New Yorker.
Forgive American consumers if they feel a bit perplexed. Policymakers and pundits have been warning them about the prospect of deflation (a prolonged and widespread decline in prices) but there’s no sign of any decline in many of th prices that people pay every day. Car-insurance premiums jumped more than nine per cent las year. Health-insurance costs are soaring, to say nothing of the cost of a haircut. Cable-TV prices have risen sixteen per cent since 2000. And then there’s college: tuitions at private colleges have jumped 5.6 per cent annually over the past three years, according to the College Board, and public colleges are even worse. In times like these, it’ hard to get worked up about deflation
Why the divergence? It may have something to do with Mozart.
Pardise Lost: Leo Hickman on the unsustainability of global travel.
The travel industry tells us that tourism makes poor countries richer and the whole world happier and more peaceful. Even the most beautiful places can retain their charm. But the truth is very different.
What the World Eats : a pictorial slide show of food and the people that eat it from around the world.
And finally, an article about lapdances that manages to be both insightful and entertaining.
How strange, my friend Meredith just wrote an Econ paper on government funding for the arts and examined many of the issues presented in the first article. Her paper really took the concept of “To keep providing the same quality of services, then, government has to get more expensive. People pay more in taxes and don’t get more in return” and ran with it, examining how government funding of the arts dilutes prices and misallocates the resources available, and in the end reduces both the quantity and quality of art produced.
I believe Surowiecki who wrote this article has got the facts leading up to his conclusion a bit wrong. He should have stated “quantity” rather than “quality” in the above quote, as with the government, quality often has nothing to do with it . . .
I don’t understand how she believes this would play out. European nations have been using (government) subsidizing for over sixty years to fund music and art projects that otherwise would not exist – these places have not reduced the quantity or quality of the art produced, but rather have elevated both and this is not just my opinion, but a critical consensus in the arts community (both academic and otherwise).
This inconvenient historical fact would seem to contradict the quote referenced here – I’m curious as to how she argued against it?
Study under libertarian Economists and the argument against government funding for the arts, and basically anything, makes perfect sense.
Her paper didn’t come out that great, but I could get her to send it to you. But lack of greatness in the paper was more due to procrastination. Her argument itself, especially when speaking with her, was quite strong.
Ah, I see now – she was clearly basing her argument around a different paradigm than the one I was thinking about – most euro governments could hardly be described as ‘libertarian’.
Libertarianism as an ideology doesn’t really interest me except when (or if) it intersects with anarchism, however I’d like a look at the paper or at least the bibliography as a reference for further investigation.
I’m certainly no expert on the finer points of rhetorical debate among economists, however, the purpose of my original comment was simply to point out that gov’t. subsidized arts funding does exist and the people who pay taxes to support it claim to enjoy the ‘products’ produced by this system.
The reason I’m so interested in a sustainable solution to the ‘arts funding’ problem, is because its come up frequently in the New York news, with the recent closing of downtown clubs like Tonic and CBGBs.
Not really enough room to go into detail here in the comments, but many New York musicians are now petitioning the local government for help – Marc Ribot, a rather famous working guitarist in NYC since the 70′s, has written a well-thought out article here
If you take the time to read it, you’ll notice he’s arguing that gov’t help may be a possible solution to the problems many of these musicians are facing – it’ll be interesting to see how NYC moves on this issue, they could be setting a precedent for other major cities which have a vested commercial interest in keeping talented groups of musicians living and playing in their clubs (NOLA comes to mind)…
Of course musicians/artists will petition the government for help/funding, as they will directly benefit from it. But they reap the benefits without having to pay for them.
The government gets its money from taxation. Taxation is coercive. The taxes I pay go towards funding/supporting many initiatives that I would rather not support. And no, I am not calling for an upheaval of the tax system, nor am I calling for the abolishment of government. I just feel it is more ideal to allow people to support those initiatives and projects that they want to, rather than to force them to support those that they have no interest in, nor definitely gain from. But this is not an ideal world, so this would likely not work.
However, all things aside, private enterprises are more efficient in providing for the people in most all things than the government can ever be, as private enterprises have to prove themselves through competition, while the government is a deliberately constructed unnatural monopoly. Yes, I honestly believe this. I don’t believe in abolishing the government, I wholeheartedly believe the government is necessary in this society to maintain well being and order, and I believe the US Government is the best government to be governed by. But even so, I know that no matter how good a government, that government cannot be as efficient as a private enterprise that is forced to prove itself in order to thrive. If a private enterprise fails to prove its value to society, it fails to maintain its operations (excluding those supported by subsidies, etc . . . ). If the government fails to prove its value to society, we are obligated to give it more money to fix its mistakes.
unless that private enterprise happens to be Microsoft…
Hey, I spent 30 minutes on that Time web site looking at photos. Very interesting. Where is “Bargteheide” where they spend $500/week on food? Why, it’s in Germany. I wonder if Cajuns spend about that much for their big families? Let me check my Quicken. . . year to date, the Comeaux’s have spent $4,281.66, which translates to. . . $171/week for two people. Now I’m hungry. P.S. that includes the rehearsal supper.
Microsoft has done anything but failed. They may have failed in your eyes and many other people’s eyes, but as far as the general population is concerned, Microsoft has not failed. That is why consumers continue to support them. Those consumers maybe be uninformed as to what they are getting themselves into, but that’s the consumers’ faults for failing to research, and not Microsoft’s.
If people did start wising up and switching to other alternatives, aka Apple, Microsoft would have to respond, and quickly, to maintain its market position. Being a big thriving company with seemingly no end in sight today really tells nothing about whether that end could be tomorrow.
@John:
Yes, the food article was my favorite as well!
Guys –
I understand like .0003% of this econ. speak so forgive my total ignorance.
I’m gonna take wild shot in the dark though and guess that the “value” that modern or even old-school economist tack on to art and the “value” that people who choose to fund art through government traditionally assign are not even in the same sphere. What I mean is, people who are willing to give up their hard earned dollars to support the arts receive something immesurable in return. Immesurable in the sense that it is about quality of life, connection to your fellow man, good will and all of the things economist still struggle to measure. For my part, I say bring on the patissieres and the studios – let them all come. I love them all!
@Jess:
Mr. Ribot talks about a similar idea to what you are saying in his article,
As a side note, I would add that the problem with anthropologists, economists, and academics in general is that they frequently insist with fanatical conviction that everything fit into their theoretical systems.
As you and Mr. Ribot indicate however, there are all kinds of qualitative factors which influence why people choose the things they do, and it’s intellectually disingenuous to argue that abstractions like the “free market” will produce a set of “bests” for every individual. Unfortunately, that kind of rhetoric (which has been stridently critiqued by people much smarter than I for the last 200 years) has come to dominate discussions of American fiscal policies.
However, I can’t say I’m totally with Mr. Ribot on this one, either. The fact is, art/culture is a commodity in our society (and euro ones as well)and is going to be treated as such well into the foreseeable future whether he gets a government subsidy or looses his job or whatever.
Consequently, I tend to side with Steven Shaviro on this question,
In other words, trying to make a move towards socialist policies that include gov’t subsidizing (as Ribot suggests) for musicians and artists is a lost cause; we’re simply re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The only way out of this problem is to go through it; I don’t think it would be wise to attempt to return to other equally problematic ideologies of the late twentieth century.
Then again, what do I know?
I know. I am often confronted with the reality that I am prone to want to rearrange chairs on the Titantic as you say.
It is very smart of Mr. Brecht to point this out. As I am fond of thinking, ideologies will always prove problematic. And moralizing is tiring for everyone. I do wish that I could talk a few more people into enjoying the benefits of a life chock full of art and artists. After all, we’ve all got an artist inside us and I think that little artist is often our finest self.