221–230 of 736 posts
Since only people with a wealthy family safety net have the wherewithal to call themselves artists, these schemes just end up as a transfer from poor to rich (kids)
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Agreed. Can just all myself an artist to get other people's tax money?
It seems there are 2000 positions and 8000 applicants. The program cost $74M, but more than paid for itself: > It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.
Reminds me of the WPA
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This is where we're at huh?
do you expect that the problems walmart solves are easy? or do you think that the government could do it cheaper if they were in charge? edit: or maybe the communities served by walmart should build their own rain ponchos and bananas locally.
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Yes and do billion dollar corporations really need that much government subsidies? Turns out yes they do, but sure enjoy your plastic trinkets from China I guess. Hopefully you thank a tax payer that pays for the welfare and medicaid of those Walmart workers, and the local town for cheaper property taxes and utility rates at Walmart. God knows Walmart couldn't exist with all this rampant welfare.
walmart solves a major logistical problem: provide government subsidized goods to low income neighborhoods. the government should like to give walmart money, as it is plausibly a cost-effective way to provide these goods to people who need them. the administrators of walmart are well rewarded for providing this public good.
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Yes and do billion dollar corporations really need that much government subsidies? Turns out yes they do, but sure enjoy your plastic trinkets from China I guess. Hopefully you thank a tax payer that pays for the welfare and medicaid of those Walmart workers, and the local town for cheaper property taxes and utility rates at Walmart. God knows Walmart couldn't exist with all this rampant welfare.
walmart solves a major logistical problem: provide government subsidized goods to low income neighborhoods. the government should like to give walmart money, as it is plausibly a cost-effective way to provide these goods to people who need them. the administrators of walmart are well rewarded for providing this public good.
This is not the case.
Walmart doesn't have the lowest prices because they are efficient, yes conventional wisdom might dictate that but you are forgetting wholesalers exist from which conventional retailers buy from and the margin definitely tilts towards walmart but there was a time where they could easily compete against walmart and set their prices.
Now what's happening is that walmart has these special deals (in this case with pepsi) where pepsi would literally surveil all marts and see which is selling cheaper than walmart (FoodLion did that) and then what Pepsi did was cut off all the promotional money of FoodLion and increase their wholesaler prices.
Is this legal? Hell no. It's all completely illegal but the govt. stopped enforcing the law
Then when it was released by FTC, the whole document was almost redacted and Trump signed an executive order essentially trying to stop it from going out but some journalists dug/pressured for its release.
So walmart isn't the base because they are price competitive, hell-no. It's because they set the floor & have special deals with other companies to maintain that floor artificially.
Which actually leads to small retailers/chains shutting down because they can't compete on price and this essentially leads to a monopoly of walmart where it can dictate prices & increase them and the people are forced to STILL go to them.
And all of this while being immensely govt subsidized as you say too while paying their employees peanuts.
Actually Walmart when it was launched in germany was sued quite a lot for such practices that iirc they had to take an exit. No country wants a walmart because they know that they might use their american profits (which we discovered how come from shady practices themselves) and then use it to run marts at losses until the competition dies which is still immensely bad long term for the average consumer of whole world but particularly the americans in my opinion as all other govts are more protective of such industries for this good reason and walmart fails to measure up to those standards in other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odhVF_xLIQA : We Uncovered the Scheme Keeping Grocery Prices High [More Perfect Union]
A lot of my points were heavily influenced by this video so I would recommend you to watch it to help understand more as well about what I am talking.
The deception of walmart actually fools a lot of people but the economical margin is actually quite low. It's the artifical floor that they set which gets unnoticed by many and this is why other retailers aren't able to compete, all of which is highly illegal but once again, the govt. stopped enforcing this law.
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i purchase a hell of a lot more stuff from Walmart than I do fine art.
What's interesting is that you don't realize how much of that stuff from Walmart had artistic processes embedded into it along the production line. Did those shower curtains have a design? Did your sweater have a color and style? Probably so, but you never pay attention to how the world of "fine art" refracts into your daily life. If the products were cheap, it's likely someone unpaid is responsible for the design. S…
The only person I know getting this money was already semi-retired after selling their house in London and retiring to the Irish countryside, and basically just noodles around on the guitar now and then.
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It seems there are 2000 positions and 8000 applicants. The program cost $74M, but more than paid for itself: > It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.
They were wise to limit it, otherwise Ireland would see an unprecidented rise in the number of artists in its population.
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do you expect that the problems walmart solves are easy? or do you think that the government could do it cheaper if they were in charge? edit: or maybe the communities served by walmart should build their own rain ponchos and bananas locally.
Yes walmart is so cost effective huh? https://www.forbes.com/sites/errolschweizer/2025/12/18/how-w...
is the point of this conversation just to proclaim you don't like some guys? what is your claim here? what action do you desire the collective to take? what is the rule that society should follow?
why do you expect that rule to lead to a more prosperous, thriving society?