71–80 of 235 posts
I am a doctor and I hate it. Please fund my passion, so I can stop doing that and bring positive externalities to society.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It will be part-time but eventually they will get better and can start making money out of it, and if not then well it can just be their hobby right? Except that's not what actually happens. People working a full time job (or more than one job) don't have the time or energy to also be a part-time artist until they make it. This is especially true for people who have other responsibilities like raising children or car…
If their skills aren't marketable in free market, why should other people subsidise them? I would much rather the money to be spend on something actually productive or physical. And not wasted entirely on art...
Handing out a few bucks to artists will not fix the main issues of why artists and all low wage workers can't survive anymore in today's cities, namely, unaffordable housing.
Europe's biggest cultural centers (London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.) have turned into the playground of foreign billionaires, real estate speculators and >six-figure income law-, management-consulting-, finance- and tech- bros, with rents skyrocketing, so how are artists or anyone else low on funds supposed to survive in these environments?
This artist-grant money will not fix the core issue as it's like trying to stop a flood with a paper tissue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never really looked too closely at the idea of UBI, although I like the concept. I always assumed that any money you earn would then be deducted from future payments. With completely arbitrary numbers, let's say UBI was 1000€/month and I earned 500€ in a particular month, then next month my UBI payment would be reduced by that amount. If I earned 1500€ my next UBI payment would be zero, but the excess 500€ would…
That's a terrible way to implement UBI. It causes the dreaded welfare trap where people are incentivized to do nothing. UBI should be unconditional. This makes it much easier to implement, removes the stigma, and most importantly avoids the welfare trap. You want people who rely on welfare to be encouraged to become self sufficient, not trap them in dependence.
Nonetheless when they appear their presence is typically (naively) chalked up to simple incompetence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Art and cultural heritage may have worth outside that represented by short-term supply and demand?
I mean, OK, but one could also argue that the reason a given artist is struggling is because their work is not highly valued in the first place. Maybe the artist is making under-appreciated contributions, or maybe their work is just not good. It's subjective, which means criticism is subjective too, but it seems a poor place to start with any UBI scheme executed in good faith. I would think it would have more value a…
Many artists that are highly valued today weren't in their times, with many dying destitute or never selling anything of note. Current valuation isn't a predictor on later appreciation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If their skills aren't marketable in free market, why should other people subsidise them? I would much rather the money to be spend on something actually productive or physical. And not wasted entirely on art...
Because if the only culture you have is the marketable one it will be McDonalds, Disney and Marvel
And giving a couple of bucks to individual artist will somehow make them able to go toe-to-toe with the Disney juggernaut how exactly?
If marketability is what's missing, then why not give free airtime to all artists on national radio/TV broadcasters instead, this way the whole county can hear/see them, and then the audience will decide if they like them or not.
You can apply your argument to european SW companies. Because local companies lacked "marketability" we are now all dependent on US tech for everything despite having some local alternatives. However, the governments giving free money to local tech companies (which many received through various EU grants) wouldn't have improved the outcome much as the customers voted with their wallets (or with their private data) to use those US tech products and not local alternatives (like how many now use iPhones and not Nokias, Blackberrys or Ericssons).
I feel it's the same with art. Consumers will vote with their wallet or their attention and consume content that they enjoy or gives them dopamine hits regardless of its origin or financial backing. So if no consumers and no patrons like your art, why should the government just give you free money except for reasons of national pride and sovereignty maybe?
> two thousand arts and culture workers for a span of three years … earmarked €25 million for the plan … top recommendation … €10.50 per hour 3 years × 2,000 hours per year (estimate of full time employment) × €10.50 per hour × 2,000 people = €126 million, five times as much as is earmarked (even ignoring administrative costs). Perhaps it’s 400 rather than 2,000, perhaps it’s not full-time, perhaps the mention of the…
Sounds basically like a grant program, not UBI. However, slapping the phrase UBI on your program while it’s trendy is a genius way to “rebrand” something most governments already do. Politicians are the best marketers.
There's statutes and case law that make it unwise for real marketers to make claims the way politicians do.
Art is almost always exclusively used for consumption. That doesn't make it worthless: it has value to the people who enjoy consuming that kind of art. But when an artist creates a work of art, that's the end of the chain – there's typically nothing that can build on that work, no other work that is enabled by this work.
The case is different for open source software, for example. Not all OSS is used productively by other people, but some of it is, enabling other work in sometimes completely different fields. For example, the Linux kernel and other OSS components which provide a versatile and free (as in free beer) operating system, have facilitated the creation of an incredible amount of value all over the world, in many different domains. Many of those thus facilitated works have themselves enabled other works, and so on. It's a source of value creation chains, not the end of one.
So, why start a grant program *cough cough* "UBI" for artists, but not for open source developers?
> two thousand arts and culture workers for a span of three years … earmarked €25 million for the plan … top recommendation … €10.50 per hour 3 years × 2,000 hours per year (estimate of full time employment) × €10.50 per hour × 2,000 people = €126 million, five times as much as is earmarked (even ignoring administrative costs). Perhaps it’s 400 rather than 2,000, perhaps it’s not full-time, perhaps the mention of the…
I've never really looked too closely at the idea of UBI, although I like the concept. I always assumed that any money you earn would then be deducted from future payments. With completely arbitrary numbers, let's say UBI was 1000€/month and I earned 500€ in a particular month, then next month my UBI payment would be reduced by that amount. If I earned 1500€ my next UBI payment would be zero, but the excess 500€ would…
Not directly, at least not in most described implementations. Most implementations say that, if you qualify, you get 1000€/month every month no matter how much you earn. Now a lot of people add a secondary mechanism where some or all of that money gets clawed back, indirectly via increased income tax, if you earn 'too much', but the base idea is the 1000€ gets deposited into your account every month no matter how much or little you earn.
The rationale for this is a), not do disincentivize doing extra work and b) to simplify the system as much as possible and remove the need to spend a lot of extra time and effort on means testing, fraud detection, handling complaints etc.