Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
621–630 of 736 posts
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#622Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But giving housing or tax breaks needs lots of admin. Isn't that less efficient? Art community's are most always self managing, i would argue finding out who makes art is much more complicated. >Giving housing forces people to live in certain places. No one is forced to take free housing or being an artist, if you want something for free you have to play by rules. >like the people don't know what they need True, but…
> True, but why are people who are artist different from anyone else, that's my critique. I don't think it is helpful to frame it in terms of, 'sure they should get it, but what about other people doing public good? Since the others can't get it, the artists shouldn't'. How about saying, 'this is a great start, how do we get a broader scheme for other philanthropic causes'?
I think it's the only logical way, same right for everyone, occupation is not a factor for additional rights.
> 'this is a great start,
And the end...sadly.
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#623Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
The part where people see their money burning away paying maintenance and tax on deteriorating assets.
Why are people holding assets unused?
Because they don't believe that the city will allow sufficient development to allow them to purchase like-assets in the future if they chose to reinvest and the carrying cost is minimal because council taxes are trivial relative to the value of the asset. If my research is correct, Kensington council taxes are under 10k USD per year.
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#624Earlier 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…
I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills. It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#625Earlier quoted context omitted.
Plenty of people get upset if they think there is someone, somewhere getting a "handout". It's easy to channel indignation toward those people and not, say, their corporate masters that seem to hold everyone's strings.
What’s “corporate masters” got to do with a transaction from taxes and inflation (stolen value on your savings and spending power) to a handout?
Are you against all taxation?
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#626Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Is it so polarising in Ireland, or just hn?
Following the announcement of Budget 2026 last October, I think this expenditure came into sharp focus, as the budget was considered to be almost hostile to workers and families, and anecdotally I think it has become more controversial since.
That said, it is not unpopular, just polarising.
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#627Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wish more intellectuals had their "brain on capitalism". It is dismaying to find out how many American academicians take Marxism seriously - unless they stem from countries like Cuba that had the misfortune to actually let Marxist ideas rule them. It is mental fentanyl for certain kind of collectivist mind. Give me Hayek and Buckley instead.
It's possible to criticize one thing without endorsing another. Your comment reads like a response to someone criticizing what the current US administration is doing by saying "yeah but the Democrats..." Binary thinking is analogous to quantizing an LLM to 2 bits (worse, actually). You're not going to get good results.
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#628Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
I can't figure out how to make the math make sense even if I were to build a house in the middle of nowhere. Time and materials is the real killer.
Some day, when AI eliminates software development as a career, maybe you will be able to hire those people to build you houses for next to nothing, but right now I don't think it matters where or how many you build. The only way the average Joe is going to be able to afford one — at least until population decline fixes the problem naturally — is for someone else to take a huge loss on construction. And, well, who is going to line up to do that?
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#629Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Because they would all refuse, presumably? Like they would refuse to fix the road, because that would benefit everyone not just their greedy selves.
Re: Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists
#630Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, there are differences. BTW credentialism - good or bad? It certainly seems to me that the idea of credentials has crept from medicine, law and engineering into formerly freer and more bohemian territories. An idea of a perepiska for singers or actors would be considered absurd by most people in history. But once money transfers are in place, bureaucracy inevitably follows.
> credentialism - good or bad? How long is string? Some accreditations are strong. Others are nearly useless. Reputation is easily hacked these days. Letters of recommendation don't mean what they used to. Something needs to fill that space - especially when you're filtering down to 2,000 applicants in a country of 5 million people. Sure, there's a lot of dodgy doctors and lawyers out there. No shortage whatsoever, d…
The latter is quite a bit closer to the old feudal system of professional guilds, which were mostly concerned with defending the interests of their own members.