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Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

artforum.com

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Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#151

Post by rsynnott »

dexen wrote: post #112
kybernetyk wrote: post #62

Why artists and not open source developers? Arguably FOSS devs create far more value for society than some dingus painting stuff with his butt cheeks.

>why artists The unsaid part: "recipients are supposed to publicly laud the government": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_painter

I mean... if that's the intention it's a bit on the optimistic side. Irish artists as a group, even those who benefit from the artists' tax exemption and various grant schemes, are not exactly known for being pro-government. I'm not sure that artists in any democratic country are; arguably artists being generally pro-government would be a rather bad sign.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#152

Post by rsynnott »

vegancap wrote: post #10

Not to be overly cynical, but could that create a surge of people claiming to be artists, given the lack of means testing?

I mean, maybe some? That's typically a risk you take with these things, unless you want to spend most of the money on oversight. It's capped, and not a huge payment, so any impact from that would be limited.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#153

Post by bryanlarsen »

DocTomoe wrote: post #148
3pt14159 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hard part is that UBI is extremely, extremely expensive. The variant I'm in favour of goes something like: 1. $12k / year to everyone 2. 50% flat tax (on non-UBI income) 3. Small federal land value tax on non-wilderness properties 4. Tax on non-resident property owners 5. UBI for citizens only (to mitigate people traveling here just to not work) But try passing that ^ in any major democracy. You can't. The reason…

If you raise taxes and prices a lot, UBI will become basically useless, because it's effects will be eaten up by inflation. Hell, why wouldn't I increase rent to the UBI amount?

If UBI doesn't increase the money supply (aka it is paid for with taxing), it shouldn't increase inflation.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#154

Post by mypastself »

sofixa wrote: post #92
kybernetyk wrote: post #62

Why artists and not open source developers? Arguably FOSS devs create far more value for society than some dingus painting stuff with his butt cheeks.

Because art is easy to appreciate universally ( anyone can like music or a painting), and software is not. It's an abstract thing for most people. I do think it'd be a great idea to have grants / subsidies / UBI for FOSS developers. The EU is slowly walking in that direction with donations and funding a big bounty programme for FOSS they directly use.

If we’re using universality as a benchmark, more people can appreciate the advances in technology facilitated by Linux, Postgres, Git, and WordPress, than they do a lot of art, which can be culturally or linguistically specific, obscure, or highly subjective in general.

Unless you’re talking about very specific art and very specific software, I don’t think universality is a strong argument.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#155

Post by DocTomoe »

headmelted wrote: post #45
paulannesley wrote: post #27

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…

Remember: van Gogh was undervalued while he was alive. I guess he should just have thrown his stuff away early and become a baker. Mozart had virtually non-stop money troubles, even before he started becoming a party animal, and died a pauper who was buried in a linen sack in a mass grave. Guess he would have had a better life being a potter.

Art is something that may only be valued highly ex post facto, and which takes a long time of intensive training to get started...

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#156

Post by rsynnott »

inglor_cz wrote: post #59
jll29 wrote: post #51

I wish for the cynics and for the literary connoisseurs that the next James Joyce comes out of this programme. Norway has had a stipend programme for writers for some time. Interesting question: how does not "prove" to be an artist, and a needy one at that? At the moment it's a lottery.

How often does a new James Joyce arise out of government subsidies? We spend much more money on art than in 1920, yet the art quality does not seem to have improved proportionately, indeed it possibly went down. That might or might not be causal (possibly talented people do not choose to be artists anymore), but it is still worrying. There is a lot of gatekeeping around art and professionals tend to declare opinions…

I mean, commercial art today is a lot better than commercial art in the 20s. Find some old radio recordings if you don't believe me. And that's where the money goes. We don't spend dramatically more on, say, literary novelists than they did in the 20s; that continues to be a thing that people do out of passion rather than for money, so you wouldn't expect the rate of production to have gone up very much.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#157

Post by bryanlarsen »

Semi-related:

Given that royalty rates are set by quasi-governmental organizations (BMI, ASCAP) I'd love to see music royalties be "fairer".

In other words, Spotify, Youtube et al should pay more per play at the lowest levels and less at the higher levels. Essentially the rich artists end up subsidizing the poor artists a little bit. Given that most rich artists were poor artists once, hopefully most of them would be supportive of such a scheme.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#158

Post by goblin89 »

rsynnott wrote: post #145
goblin89 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few times in the past 3–5 years I came across Europeans who would travel and do stuff like photography or filmmaking while being compensated by the government. I was told that those are programs where basically all you need is to be an unemployed artist. (Some of those people would also do remote software consulting or such, although I think that was bending the rules slightly.) For a country that wants to start a…

> mislabeling it (because of course it is not actually universal) as “UBI” could be strategic Note that the Irish government, which already has a bunch of other artists' grants and supports, is _not_ calling it "universal". That's a (mostly foreign) media thing.

I see. Makes my comment rather meaningless.

> which already has a bunch of other artists' grants and supports

I imagine most governments do it to some degree, but the question is how straightforward those grants are to get by someone who legitimately warrants one. Is there a lot of bureaucracy to get through in Ireland? do you often meet creatives receiving such a grant? traveling on it abroad?

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#159

Post by rsynnott »

goblin89 wrote: post #158
rsynnott wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mislabeling it (because of course it is not actually universal) as “UBI” could be strategic Note that the Irish government, which already has a bunch of other artists' grants and supports, is _not_ calling it "universal". That's a (mostly foreign) media thing.

I see. Makes my comment rather meaningless. > which already has a bunch of other artists' grants and supports I imagine most governments do it to some degree, but the question is how straightforward those grants are to get by someone who legitimately warrants one. Is there a lot of bureaucracy to get through in Ireland? do you often meet creatives receiving such a grant? traveling on it abroad?

So the big one is that earnings from art up to 50k are tax exempt, and that's very easy to get, of course.

Re: Ireland to launch basic income program for artists

#160

Post by timeon »

nix23 wrote: post #114
ramblerman wrote: post #104

As others have mentioned this is mostly marketing and not UBI for many reasons but one thing that irks me particularly with this initiative is selecting candidates based on occupation. The *whole point* is to *not* select based on who is more or less deserving, that exists already and is called welfare.

Is "artist" even a occupation? No really, is that a quality thing or so? Is a NFT-Gorilla Creator a artist? The 3 star Cook? The aerobatics Pilot? Musician...the Haskell programmer? Would Banksy count as an artist from the beginning or just when he already sold stuff for millions?

> Would Banksy count as an artist from the beginning or just when he already sold stuff for millions?

Selling stuff for millions makes you businessman not an artist. He was recognized as an artist before that. But I guess that just confirms your point about occupation.

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