Fund-amental
Super Tuesday was pretty exciting, as caucusing and primaries go - I listened to results rolling in all night as I drove from Fargo to Minneapolis - and it seems to have put us all in a heightened political state (level orange, perhaps?). An interesting post from February 5 by Soho the Dog (one of my bookmarks), of which I've excerpted a paragraph here:
"When the government funds arts that wouldn't gain sufficient traction in the free market for survival, those making this argument see it as somehow cheating, bending the rules, gaming the system. What they can never let themselves admit is that the rules of free-market capitalism are bent all the time—if they weren't, capitalism and any society based on it would collapse. When the Federal Reserve tinkers with interest rates and the money supply to ensure that the markets don't slip into runaway monopolistic inflation or an insurmountable depression, it's gaming the system. When Congress engineers tax credits and deductions to encourage corporate behavior that the market would otherwise unduly punish, it's gaming the system. Medicare? Unemployment benefits? Face it—it's government spending that keeps the economically disaffected from turning into revolutionaries. Any free-market capitalist system requires perpetual benevolent interference to protect it against its own potential for economic and political damage.
In receiving and expecting state support, the arts aren't playing outside the rules, they're playing by the exact same rules everybody else does."
And, in the spirit of impartiality, the opposite argument here.
In Soho the Dog's corner, we have, quite unsurprisingly, Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who has "propelled the National Endowment for the Arts to its biggest budget boost in nearly three decades, a $20.3 million increase to $144.7 million for fiscal 2008, which ends Sept. 30" according to this recent Wall Street Journal article.
In the opposite corner, we have, quite unsurprisingly, the Bush administration, who has "called for cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts... the administration proposed a cut of $16.3 million — to $128.4 million from $144.7 million", according to today's New York Times.
Those of us in the business, meanwhile, keep on fighting the good fight, doing what we do best - presenting great works of art to the broadest audiences possible.
"When the government funds arts that wouldn't gain sufficient traction in the free market for survival, those making this argument see it as somehow cheating, bending the rules, gaming the system. What they can never let themselves admit is that the rules of free-market capitalism are bent all the time—if they weren't, capitalism and any society based on it would collapse. When the Federal Reserve tinkers with interest rates and the money supply to ensure that the markets don't slip into runaway monopolistic inflation or an insurmountable depression, it's gaming the system. When Congress engineers tax credits and deductions to encourage corporate behavior that the market would otherwise unduly punish, it's gaming the system. Medicare? Unemployment benefits? Face it—it's government spending that keeps the economically disaffected from turning into revolutionaries. Any free-market capitalist system requires perpetual benevolent interference to protect it against its own potential for economic and political damage.
In receiving and expecting state support, the arts aren't playing outside the rules, they're playing by the exact same rules everybody else does."
And, in the spirit of impartiality, the opposite argument here.
In Soho the Dog's corner, we have, quite unsurprisingly, Dana Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, who has "propelled the National Endowment for the Arts to its biggest budget boost in nearly three decades, a $20.3 million increase to $144.7 million for fiscal 2008, which ends Sept. 30" according to this recent Wall Street Journal article.
In the opposite corner, we have, quite unsurprisingly, the Bush administration, who has "called for cuts at the National Endowment for the Arts... the administration proposed a cut of $16.3 million — to $128.4 million from $144.7 million", according to today's New York Times.
Those of us in the business, meanwhile, keep on fighting the good fight, doing what we do best - presenting great works of art to the broadest audiences possible.
Labels: music and politics, the business of music
posted by Sarah at
7:24 PM
1 Comments:
It's worth noting, of course, that President Bush has proposed these cuts, as well as his current proposal to virtually zero out funding for public broadcasting, in every budgetary year of his presidency. Congress has never yet acquiesced, even when both houses were controlled by the Republican party, and Bush has apparently never felt strongly enough about it to insist via veto.
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