The simple answer to the first part is that if you don’t have government programs that promote a better society, then you end up – more or less by definition – with a crappier society. You end up with one that, depending on what you choose to not support, may be less educated, less informed, less enlightened, or have access to fewer public infrastructure resources or less technological advancement or a less capable medical system. There is inevitably going to be disagreement about spending priorities, but to conclude from this that therefore no spending should occur at all for the advancement of society is totally ludicrous.
The final point is that private money is no substitute for these kinds of government programs, for a whole host of practical reasons. The collective effect of individual spending tends to be ad hoc, shallow, self-interested, and mostly invested in short-term gratification. Government programs are institutionalized plans with often very long-term horizons. Private money is what gets you private schools for your own kids; government money is what provides public education for everyone. Private money brought you the Kardashian dolts in Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Donald Trump in The Apprentice (and, in a stunning bit of tragicomedy, helped elevate him to the presidency); public money and a collaboration between PBS and BBC brought you Carl Sagan in Cosmos.
It’s true that a significant portion of PBS’s budget comes from private donations, but it’s also true – for that precise reason – that public broadcasting in the US has by far the worst per-capita funding of public broadcasting anywhere in the civilized world, and the nation is correspondingly the poorer for it in terms of culture and the general level of public knowledge. In the richest country in the world, PBS goes begging, hat in hand, to be able to sustain its programming, while commercial television inflicts an endless barrage of garbage on the airwaves. Such are the perils of relegating a national resource to private money, and letting worth be determined solely by popularity.
I agree, but it’s not just in research and development (especially basic research) that major public investment and a long-term view are required. It’s also true in areas like education, public infrastructure, and the arts.
No. By definition you end up with a society that does not have government programs to promote a better society. Society may be better or worse off as a result. Your conclusion begs the question - it is not a given that government promotion of X leads to better society - that’s really the crux of the argument. Your “better” is not everyone else’s “better”.
I feel that in the art world anything that angers anyone “traditional” meaning christian, heterosexual, male, white - well they are open season. So if some gay guy does some work that insults Christians - then it is outstanding art and worth funding. Anything that has even a whiff of conservative values - well that is all crap.
Plus, do they even know what is good “art”? Isnt it all subjective? Who decides what is good “art”? Their are millions of artists out there working hard who cant get a cent for their work and then somebody comes along and because of some random person, now their work is priceless.
Wasnt there a story of some art “experts” thinking a janitors cart left out in a museum was a piece of art?
Sure, but there are multiple levels of meaning here. Superficially I’m stating the self-evident fact that if the government doesn’t opt to pay for “X”, it’s not going to get “X”. Whether private enterprise will choose to provide it instead, and the kind of society that would result, is of course theoretically an open question and is at the heart of many fundamental liberal-conservative differences.
But no one doubts that there are many programs that only governments can run effectively, such as much of basic scientific research (vs. the applied kind), public infrastructure like highways, airports, and waterways, protecting the quality of our food, water, medicine, and environment, and so forth. Many of those things are being done well, but many others are not, and IME there is a good deal of evidence that when the government fails to fund important public programs, society does in fact suffer.
For instance, the generally crappy state of public education, which is downright deplorable for those in lower income brackets. Ever seen a public school in the less affluent section of a big American city? Or the state of public housing or social programs for the disadvantaged. Or, as mentioned, the pathetic state of public broadcasting, which gets less funding than any other advanced democracy on earth; commercial television is mostly a vast wasteland of content-free idiocy – most Americans don’t know who their own Congressional representatives are nor could they name most of the Supreme Court justices, but they can sure name the Kardashians and follow reality TV like it was the wisdom of the ages. Or how about the state of health care in the only advanced democracy on earth that doesn’t have a universal system – a health care system that just about everyone agrees is broken, but everyone is trying to fix on the basis of their own ideology instead of looking at perfectly functional models that exist in every industrialized country on earth.
Or how about this headline: Evolution Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds. The only one of 34 mostly western democracies surveyed in which more people cling to young-earth creationism than in America is Turkey. 42% of Americans are creationists, and whopping 73% are either creationists or believe in some kind of evolution where God is doing the driving. 40 million don’t have health care, many more have crap public education, and few know anything much about their own government. Half of them don’t even bother to vote, and the ones who do got together recently and elected a national embarrassment. Those are just some random metrics that I don’t consider positive or indicative of the right public spending priorities.
Setting aside your “true artists” dig…from your link:
This 4-year-old girl managed to capture the gallery director’s attention with her art before her age was known. That’s impressive. Imagine what this girl will do at fourteen. Or twenty-four. Maybe, just maybe, she’ll become a “true artist.” :dubious:
I don’t give a wet fart what you feel, Urbanredneck. I asked you for evidence. You have none. It’s not up to me whether you keep making claims that have no basis in fact, but if it were me, I’d stop. Your feelings matter to you and your wife, but not to folks engaged in policy debate.
I think you are right and I have no objection to this limited type of spending. It doesn’t follow that we should then fund every child singing or art group in every community. If we go that far (e.g. having a populace educated in the arts is a long term investment that government should make) then by definition government should be involved in everything as long as it is not affirmatively harmful to its citizens.
Everyone has a pet program that they believe is absolutely essential to civilization. And I would venture that most people are economically conservative except when it comes to their own piece of the pie. Cut out all of this waste, but don’t cut X, because X is essential, where X happens to be where I get my paycheck from or I have a particular interest in.
If you cut X, then the people who like X can give you statistics or wonderful Powerpoint presentations on how absolutely tremendous X is and how one must sincerely be an ISIS supporter if he wants to cut X.
The solution is to get the government out of such things, which is the subject of this thread, like opera and other arts. If we get into funding such things, there is no limiting principle as to why we shouldn’t fund everything.
Even if they promote the “general welfare of the United States”?
What is a ‘legitimate governmental function’ if not those things that the elected representatives to the Congress, and the President, and the courts view as authorized by the Constitution, including those things that promote the “general welfare of the United States”?
Well, no. There’s a libertarianish/18th-century property-owner/strict constitutionalist approach that I find pernicious, but that doesn’t boil down to “things that I personally like.” If you want to disagree with someone intelligently, it’s important to understand where they’re coming from.
“The general welfare,” is a phrase that appears in the preamble, and does not itself confer any additional power upon any department of the federal government. (Jacobson v. Massachusetts).
And the current debate seems to arise from the elected representatives to the Congress, and the President planning to withdraw funding; if they do, does that settle the issue?
Mmm…not necessarily. There are various thresholds that need to be met. One threshold is, is this the government’s business in the first place? One higher threshold is, is this what the current elected officials want? One higher threshold is, will elected officials face punishment in the next election if they do away with this? The highest threshold is, can the government constitutionally stop providing this function?
I don’t think anyone would argue that the NEA meets this highest level of government function (contrasted to something like a state’s provision of free public education as mandated in a state constitution). Some would argue that elected officials will face punishment for failing to provide this function. Nobody disputes that (many of) the current jerks in office want to do away with the NEA.
But Ultravires is disputing that it’s a legitimate government function. It’s fine to say, “yes, it is, in part because it was voted into office by elected officials and has not succumbed to court challenges.”
Oh, I know exactly where that particular “libertarianish/18th-century property-owner/strict constitutionalist approach” really comes from. A decade and a half immersing myself in those people before I got my head out of my ass and started living and thinking and seeing the world as an adult isn’t something you forget lightly.
That argument can only be either that the arts do not constitute part of our general welfare, or that the government should not use the power the beloved Founding Fathers gave it (which ones and why not, then?).
So is the real position being asserted above that government should only fund arts that I like? That don’t challenge my views and assumptions? That fit in well with what I think the political climate should be? That’s not how this works.
