Counting the true cost of the arts cuts is the headline on a Guardian article by Mark Brown. It starts (emphasis added):
A very good thing, the Lost Arts website, was launched on Thursday in Westminster with the aim of of recording all the organisations, initiatives, projects, commissions, tours and more that will be lost due to cuts in public spending on the arts.
It will also keep a running total of money lost to the arts and the money lost to the Treasury as a consequence.
The initiative is a collaboration between eight unions: the Musicians’ Union (MU), Equity, The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, the NUJ, Bectu, Unite, Prospect and PCS.
If you follow the link you get to Lost Arts. The front page currently says:
Money lost to the arts since 30.03.2011: £20,392,023.
Money lost to the economy since 30.03.2011: £40,784,046.
Emphasis added, again. The latter figure is exactly twice the former. I suppose this is a reference to the claim made by John Smith, President of the FEU, in the comments that “Every £1 invested in the Arts generates £2 for the wider economy”.
£2 out for every £1 in is really very modest as such claims go.
Well, bear in mind that these people think money comes from a fairy who lives in a tree somewhere. So the idea that a government cutting spending on the arts in order to reduce debt – and hence interest payments which are crowding out private borrowing – is, in the eyes of these cretins, “taking money out of the economy”.
Bless their dear little hearts.
If they really believe this, shouldn’t the rich ones be donating To The Greater Good themselves by funding the arts directly?
They’d get kudos, the benefits of patronage, and be Helping Britain!
Worthless rent-seekers, the lot of them.
Art benefits the economy when art produces value – in other words, when someone chooses to pay for it.
Last year I went with a mate to see ELP tribute band ‘Noddy’s Puncture’. Not everybody’s cup of tea I’m sure, but for a couple of old prog rockers it was a great night, the band were excellent. The gig took place in a big room in a pub and it cost about six quid to get in. I can’t think that NP can possibly make a living out of what they do, they are just doing it for the love of the music and, it would appear, at their own expense.
Money lost to the arts since 30.03.2011: £20,392,023.
Money lost to the economy since 30.03.2011: £40,784,046.
should read:
Money saved by the taxpayer since 30.03.2011: £20,392,023.
Money lost to the artists since 30.03.2011: £40,784,046.
There is also the small amount recovered by artists now doing productive work, small, but still.
I think at this point I should point out that every
dollarpound bequeathed to me by the treasury will return three.Yes, yes, I’m an American on the other side of the world with no financial connection to the UK. But I’m quite sure the evidence to back up my claim is every bit as strong as Mr. Brown’s.
Eric, I’ll see your three and raise it to four. That’s right Britons, for every pound you send to Dave in the USA, I’ll return four, that’s FOUR pounds. Why send it to Dave and not Eric? Glad you asked. He’ll just waste his pounds on booze and strippers, I’ll wisely invest mine in coke and hookers. I’ll be eagerly awaiting your check.
Dave, I trust you’ll be challenging our preconceptions by spending the money on coke and hookers ironically.
I’ll sponsor Dave- since his actions are more likely to be illegal in more states, even though the state should butt out of victimless transactions, then helping Dave is helping to bring down the nanny-state!
Of course, if you send me the money, I’ll spend it on hookers and strippers, and take photos of the strippers, which I’ll think about posting to you!
He’ll just waste his pounds on booze and strippers…
Waste? We don’t waste money anymore. These days everything is an investment. They’re dancing to pay for college. You’re not against education, are you?
It looks to me as though they are argueing for the removal of all subsidies, fancy an industry running at 100% profit!!
On a side note Im all for abolition of subsidies for things like orchestras etc. That should see arts back in public trying to perform well enough to make a quid, instead of producing “witty” crap for the 5 patrons who think shitting in a bed and sprinkling hundreds and thousands on top of it is art.
Perhaps there’s an important corollary for that: if you’re engaged in labor and you can no longer find a buyer (and/or your taxpayer-extorted subsidy dries up) for the product of that labor, it’s a sure sign that it’s time you for you to move on and find something different to do.
That Lost Arts comments page:
http://www.lost-arts.org/comments/
is very instructive. All three comments are from union reps bemoaning the fact that their taxpayer-extorted cookie has suddenly been yanked out of their sweaty little hands. No talk about moving along and finding something new to do, though, oh no. Instead, the focus is on how their going to claw their way back aboard the gravy train.
It puts me in mind of the “fair trade” racket. According to the Fair Trade racketeers, if you can’t find a buyer for your product at a price point sufficient to meet your costs, the solution isn’t to wise up, sell up, and go into another field of field of endeavour. The solution, instead, is to bully buyers into changing their behaviour and start parting with more of their money so that you can continue to do something that economic conditions have clearly indicated you shouldn’t be doing.
Case in point: this fine talk from Paul Noon, a union leader whose mob rejoices in the name of “Prospect:”
Apparently, Mr. Noon isn’t aware that “the public” was already paying for access to the “treasures” to which he refers by having money extorted from them. Either that, or he’s perfectly aware of that himself, but is banking that anyone reading those comments is ignorant of the fact.
At any rate, it’s obvious he feels that the primary concern of the public ought to be whether or not the 5,000 members of his mob can earn a living; any petty wants and desires the public might harbor for themselves and their own families can just go hang.
(No word yet on whether the “nation’s treasures” will soon be going into hock to help subsidize the the public for a change.)
Well if someone has to lose his job as an artist making heaps of bricks in a gallery and start building houses, or instead of pickling strange things in jars for exhibition start producing food that someone can eat, then I guess that is loss that one can live with.
In fact, in general, when I think of some of the destructive jobs that people do in so many fields (politics, media, finance, education . . ) my feeling is that everyone would be far better off if they simply stopped and went on the dole.
Hell no I’m not. Just about every American stripper, Korean bar-girl, or Thai go-go dancer I’ve pissed my … errrr, invested my money wisely with said they were going to college.
Dave, are you making a collage of collegiates?
Could we possibly have subsidized economists doing art?
Let’s give Paul Krugman some crayons and coloring books. He finds an intellectual level where he’s comfortable, and the rest of us no longer have to clean up his anal haberdashery.
Everybody gets something and everybody wins!
(someone needs to loan him a crash helmet for the coloring. It wouldn’t do for a Nobel Prize winner to take two inches of Burnt Sienna in the left nostril.)
This is very good services and site also because aim of recoding all the organization , initiatives , projects , that will be lost due to cuts in public spending on the arts
I love the pretend exact numbers that Natalie’s post points to.
The subsidy grubbers do not just say (vagely) that they are an economic benefit – they make up exact numbers (right down to the Pound).
Truly they are ultra scum – they deserve a good slap.
“Advocating violence” – I could have meant slap as in “verbal put down”, I am not saying I did mean that but I could have done.
They write as if the arts have always had an anual government subsidy – but it only started with World War II.
By the way – Sunfish, very good comment.
I would even pay for the free crayons if Krugman (and the rest of these so called economists) would stick to colouring books.