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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

#601

Post by jodrellblank »

limagnolia wrote: post #562
kiba wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price. You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works. The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an own…

If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.

It seems London hit record levels of empty properties in 2024, some 30,000 of them worth £2Bn or so.

What part of your idea was supposed to stop that happening and why didn't it work?

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#602

Post by komali2 »

shwaj wrote: post #581
komali2 wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ok, well that problem has just been solved already by Ireland. What's your argument to do it some other way?

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#603

Post by ProllyInfamous »

>"...go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."

>—Kurt Vonnegut

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#604

Post by bawolff »

ergocoder wrote: post #290
bawolff wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could evaluate how much art gets created

Anyone could have created a godly insane amount of arts if they don't care about quality. The quantity of arts isn't a good metrics.

Sure, but you can also evaluate if it gets awards, or buyers, buzz, etc.

I agree its pretty subjective and not the essiest thing to evaluate, but i think its certainly possible.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#605

Post by komali2 »

spankalee wrote: post #600
komali2 wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question, but it's too narrowly focused. Surely we can think of more risk-reward structures than just "founding engineer?" What about worker co-ops? Revenue sharing agreements? Profit sharing? Equity on top of salary? Base pay plus performance? Capital owners aren't the only ones taking a risk, laborers do as well. Why is it that only capital risk is considered?

SBA loans and other state funding...

State funding is socialism, I thought we weren't about that here? Anyway that's basically what this Ireland thing is about.

SBA loans are given at the whim of a bank, who is looking for a very strong guarantee of return on investment. It can also come with terms that restrict business behaviors - this is HN, just imagine Bain capital gave you ten million dollars, do you then get to run your business in a way that targets a healthy, sustainable profit margin with albeit flat growth line?

Anyway that's boring and been done before. Surely after ~300 years of plain Jane capitalism we can start playing with more exotic modes of organization? Why do only the banks get to invent new financial instruments to destroy markets with?

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#606

Post by parineum »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #572
limagnolia wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.

I know of cities where real estate development is rampant, sometimes to the detriment of quality, and yet apartment prices are soaring.

That's because, in the places where housing is expensive, it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. It's a pipe dream that you can out build demand in these places. Reducing prices of housing in nice places to live (by any means, including building) will only result in more demand up until that insatiable demand is satisfied.

Nice places to live can't support all the people that want to live there.

Because demand is, for all intents and purposes, insatiable, the dollar value of housing/property isn't based on supply and demand because supply can't practically be increased to affect demand. Instead, the price is related to what a prospective buyer can afford to pay _every month_ and, thus, is related to interest rates. Interest rates go down, prices go up to the point where a prospective buyer's mortgage payment would be the same.

People who bring up the (un)affordability of housing are never talking about Oklahoma, they're talking about the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City, Seattle, Portland, etc. All places that are so desirable, they can't practically support everyone that wants to live there.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#607

Post by closewith »

monknomo wrote: post #585
closewith wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

No, that's not correct. I specifically separated the pure economic impact from the society impact, but the only societal impact used to quantify the success of the pilot scheme is that the people paid a basic income by the scheme had higher life satisfaction as measured by a single survey question.

That is the basis used by Government to claim that it's a social benefit.

Personally, I support the arts and I think that culture, health, housing accessibility, safety, fitness, happiness, and companionship are all better measures of a society than GDP or other fiscal metrics.

Right now, we have a health, housing, and social crises desperate for resources - resources that are allocated exclusively through Euro budgets. This pilot scheme has not demonstrated any cultural or social impact at all. Only the aforementioned increase in recipient satisfaction.

Meanwhile people in dire situations face multi-year waits for operations, or dying of a treatable stroke/MI due to a lack of ambulances, or death by suicide as the mental health services are overwhelmed.

Is the WELLBY score of these artists more important the WELLBY score of parents awaiting their kid's operation for the second or third spring? Or burying their children? Or raising them in hotel rooms?

Ireland is only economically successful. We are failing our citizenry abysmally outside of fiscal terms and basic income for artists should be allocated while hundreds of more pressing needs are left unmet.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#608

Post by closewith »

dahart wrote: post #559
closewith wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> does only the arts deserve this Baby steps. Everyone deserves it, but getting there in one step is politically impossible almost everywhere in the world. Nobody’s saying only the arts deserve subsidies. It’s just easier to justify. But if we want everyone to have basic income, we need to applaud whenever it happens, even if it’s a small subset, and argue they deserve it and that we should have more of it. Complaini…

> It’s just easier to justify.

It definitely isn't. In fact this is so polarising that I wonder if it's an attempt to poison the concept of basic income for decades to come.

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#609

Post by philipallstar »

komali2 wrote: post #469
misja111 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People seem to think only money has value. Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread? What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax pa…

Nobody pays to view a mural, but a lot of people view it, and property values go up as a result. It cost the artist time, effort, and money to make it, and if you hire an artist specifically to make a mural, it's prohibitively expensive for an individual. Better to amortize the cost across the population and have public works. Like we do for infrastructure. Seems to work just fine.

Isn't this arguing indirectly for national taxpayers to prop up the value of certain properties? Why not just have a local collaboration with a local artist and people pay directly?

Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

#610

Post by philipallstar »

TomasBM wrote: post #591
EQmWgw87pw wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument makes sense, but a park has a measurable scope. We all want it to be X sqft, with Y trees, and it will cost Z dollars. Are you going to force artists to make the specific art that the community is in need of, or can they just do nothing?

Not OP, but posed like that, neither. Expect something? Yes. Enforce it? Not sure for the first tranche, but make it a prerequisite for continued funding. One big obstacle is, of course, how to define what to expect from each artist. For example, you can't expect the same level of output from sculptors and musicians. Another big obstacle is obviously the expected quality of output. I don't pretend to know the solutio…

I don't think there's any evidence that those obstacles are surmountable, unless it's something like the Pope telling Michaelangelo to paint a ceiling. A bridge has defined scope and budget (ish) and a defined benefit attached to it, which many people will sign off on before it is commissioned, and it might take years to do, but it will also serve the local population for potentially hundreds of years in a practical way.
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