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Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

reuters.com

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Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#581

Post by shwaj »

komali2 wrote: post #471
ryanjshaw wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder why the tax payers who care can’t contribute directly to a fund, and keep government out of entirely.

Then it would be a popularity contest and depend on the artists' ability to market themselves in a capitalist space. The one with the best TikTok channel would get the money. That doesn't lead to having diverse, interesting, and challenging art.

That’s not what they’re saying. Only the funding source would change; the funds would still be split evenly to anyone who meets the criteria of being an artist.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#582

Post by BryantD »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #408
BryantD wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All true, but let's not lose track of relative costs. The income program provides €33,800,000 a year (2000 participants, €325 a week, 52 weeks in a year). Double that to account for cost of managing the program -- that seems too high to me, but I want to err on the side of caution for this analysis. Some percentage of that money flows right back into the economy, of course. Meanwhile, ignoring windfall corporate taxe…

This program has nothing going for it. That 33 million could have built, let’s say, 66 houses and housed, let’s say, 264 people (66 families of four) for a generation before needing much in the way of maintenance. But no, fuck the working poor , let’s fund artists. Myopic.

Sorry, but what exactly makes you say that artists aren't working poor?

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds a bit like you've got a pre-existing opinion of the value of artists vs. however you're defining working poor.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#583

Post by 1234letshaveatw »

the_gipsy wrote: post #510
BSDobelix wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK. It's a bad scheme, it divide's your population into people who have to create "wealth", and people who create "art". Yes creating art (or preserving rare potatoes[1]) should be supported by your government if it's not survivable in a capitalistic society, however having different rights because of your occupation is not better then the middle ages. [1]…

> people who have to create "wealth" most people don't "create wealth". They're forced to serve up half of their awake time to someone that is "wealthy", most likely through inheritance.

And now they're forced to serve up some of their awake time to artists

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#584

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

dgb23 wrote: post #386
ap99 wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only tax people so much before it's too much. effective tax rates 0% ... not realistic outside very unique circumstances. 25% ... feels fair to me. 33% ... still fair but yeah 1 out of every 3 days worked you start to feel that. 50% ... the border of fair and unfair. if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin. Now, when you are near that border of fair and unfair and then you…

Ireland is a tax haven though?

A big one. Corps love BEPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_as_a_tax_haven

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#585

Post by monknomo »

closewith wrote: post #490
AdamConwayIE wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to wonder whether or not it returns value to the tax payer. The Irish government already monitored the pilot program for two years, publishing all of the details and findings. [1] "The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return" This came about as a mixture of greater economic activity from participants, cultural im…

Thanks for linking the CBA. I hadn't seen that before > "The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return" Okay, so if you read the CBA, the net fiscal cost of the pilot was: * Gross pilot cost (2021–2025): ~€114 MM * Tax revenue: ~€36 MM * Social protection savings: ~€6.5 MM * Net fiscal cost: ~€72 MM So for every €1 of public mone…

I think you two are using different definitions of society.

In this comment society seems to mean "the government, and its tax revenue profit/loss statement"

In the previous comment society seems to be construed more broadly and encompass both non-economic activity and economic activity outside the collection and disbursement of tax funds.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#586

Post by jjice »

RupertSalt wrote: post #235

In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts has issued more than 128,000 grants, totaling more than $5 billion, to fund the projects of American artists. These subsidies have not lacked controversy, and were eventually challenged at the Supreme Court level, during the Clinton administration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Art... If you or your parents would like to sample a NSF…

There was an interesting part of an episode of The West Wing where some politicians were trying to cut this budget to make room for something else (maybe National Parks?). It was neat to see the arguments on both sides, both for an against this. In general, it seems like it gets some poor uses, but also some culturally valuable ones.

Unfortunately I don't remember the references off hand.

I do think there's value in a society encouraging the arts. I don't know what that best implementation is (if at all), though.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#587

Post by monknomo »

EQmWgw87pw wrote: post #500
akudha wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later I wonder how far are we from a song that is entirely generated by AI and becomes as loved as a song created by a human, and is still sung/played by people decades later? It feels weird to even think about it. If AI does get as good as humans at creating art (I think it might), what happens then? Will human generated art be still as respected/valuable? Will humans…

Corporations produce things (productive), while UBI rewards unproductive behavior (theoretically)

people working for corporations produce things, I think you'll find the incorporating docs, and the property owned do not produce things by themselves.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#588

Post by bugglebeetle »

closewith wrote: post #405
Schlagbohrer wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Nirvana first moved from their small Washington town to Seattle, they were able to pay their rent + everything else from working minimum wage jobs for 2 weeks a month. They had time to practice music and pursue their art. In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire…

> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to…

Ireland’s affordability problems are almost exclusively centered around its housing crisis and they need to just commit themselves to over-supply induced wealth destruction for the landlord class and older generations. Thankfully, there demographics also support such a move.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#589

Post by jmye »

BSDobelix wrote: post #412
jimnotgym wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth. So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?

>Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth. That's what i meant with the potatoes, the government pays for the field with the rare potatoes, and the standardized potatoes make wealth. >So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it? With free housing (art community's), tax free stuff (for small to medium sales etc) l…

> Is my friend who plays the didgeridoo in his free time now an artist if he declares it's suddenly his full-time occupation?

Is this really a risk, given UBI is generally minimal? Anyone who wants to live on it full-time to support their art, whatever it may be, is welcome to it. It's not like they're sitting back and getting rich, here.

> One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state).

Because "UBI for everyone who deserves it" is a much harder, bigger step, and fighting against small wins because they don't include literally every single outlier case you can think of is absurdly non-productive, not to mention that it's a vacuous counter-argument.

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