Why do Trump and other "conservatives" want to defund opera and other arts?

Great Debates
81

Exactly. Here are just a few listings of recent NEA grants in the field of music that are emphatically not just for consumption by rich people:

The bulk of the NEA’s grant funding goes to thousands and thousands of comparatively small and local projects like these, in dribbles of $5000 here, $15000 there, and so on. This tiny but persistent drip feed of essential financial nutrients is crucial to keeping American community arts and performance alive.

A lot of people who really enjoy the local bluegrass festival and summer Shakespeare productions, etc., and appreciate opportunities for non-wealthy high school students to perform in bands and orchestras and dance and play festivals, etc., will be very surprised and disappointed if the NEA goes tits-up. (Meanwhile, municipalities will continue soaking their residents for tax revenues to support expensive new stadiums to house professional sports franchises whose owners and players make millions of dollars. Apparently the principle that entertainment enterprises shouldn’t get handouts from the public treasury doesn’t apply to them.)

82

Yep. This bluegrass PBS program is partially funded by the NEA.

83

Let’s put the National Endowment for the Arts in the context of other federal expenditures.

US News & World Report: “War Games, Budget Games: Pumping up the Defense Department’s coffers through off-budget chicanery doesn’t help solve the Pentagon’s problems.”

The San Diego Union-Tribune: “Congress shouldn’t fund what Pentagon doesn’t want”

Military.com: “Congress Pushes for Weapons Pentagon Didn’t Want”

The Center for Public Integrity: “Congress funds problematic weapons the Pentagon does not want”

If the Congress can authorize expenditures of tens of billions of dollars for weapon systems the Department of Defense didn’t ask for, don’t need, and don’t want to be obligated to maintain just to give money to defense contractors in what amounts to the largest corporate welfare program in history, I think a fraction of a percent of that spent on the arts is an ‘entitlement’ we can readily afford.

Stranger

84

This is a dumb analogy, even allowing for the presumably inadvertent garbling of the phrase “can’take put enough assessment in seats”.

Mine workers mine coal in order to earn a living. Consumers consume coal in order to obtain energy. In both cases, the coal itself is just a means to an end. Coal mining has zero purpose except to be an economically viable source of energy. If a cheaper source of energy is found, there’s no reason to continue supporting coal mining.

But the performing arts aren’t assessed in terms of how cheaply they can provide some unit of entertainment. If they were, then all the sports fans who expect their fellow citizens to go on paying taxes to support their stadiums and teams would be staying home watching free YouTube videos of skateboarders and hackysack players instead.

We spend federal money on the arts for the same reason we spend federal money on parks and wilderness: because they benefit society as a whole, because most people get some kind of tangential benefit from them even if only a minority of people really love them and get closely involved with them, and because universal popularity and financial profit aren’t the only metrics for determining whether something is worthwhile.

85

The government wasting money elsewhere really isn’t relevant. I think that the list Kimstu pulled up shows that many of my assumptions were incorrect and alleviates many of my concerns.

86

And to be honest, I’m not that big of an advocate that the goverment is obliged to support the arts. If we, as a nation, were strapped for cash and needed to cut expenditures to the bone to be able to continue to provide basic services and maintain critical infrastructure, I’d be in favor of cutting funding for the arts, and frankly, the NEA is a political loser as far as progressives are concerned; it would actually make sense from the standpoint of subverting criticism to find alternative funding for important but less popular arts. But when we are willing to spend enormous amounts of money on completely useless shit as an entitlement for actually wealthy people (rather than the hypothetically wealthy people who are the supposed beneficiaries of the NEA according to critics here and elsewhere), the notion that we “can’t afford” or “shouldn’t pay for” art using public funds is pretty much the definition of hypocracy. It’s like buying on son a new Ferrari and telling the other that he has to drive a 1973 Ford Pinto because you can’t afford to buy him a new car. Funding the arts creates jobs, stimulates discretionary consumer spending on tourism, and provides cultural enrichment by exposing and perpetuating forms of art and music that are outside the sphere of the popular entertainment industry. The same people who want to defund the NEA are those who want to sell off National Park and Forest lands for exploitation by wealthy companies rather than recreation and outdoor use by the populace.

Stranger

87

By the way, that link appears to be broken: it should have led to the search results for grants in the field of “Music” at this NEA webpage.

88

Assessments was an auto correct error. That you chose to lead off your rebuttal with that nicely relieves me of the need to take the rest of your post seriously. Attacking grammar and spelling are the hallmarks of weak argument.
You took three paragraphs to say that you like art and parks and are cool with spending tax dollars on those things. What you left out was why your opinion carries more weight than that of someone who would spend that money elsewhere or not at all.

89

:dubious: Good to know, thanks. As long as you’re sharing, what happened with the “can’take put”?

Actually, if you’d read more carefully you’d have noticed that I didn’t attack your grammar or spelling in criticizing the substance of your post: I said that your analogy was dumb even allowing for the garbled part as an inadvertent error. In other words, I was pointing out that even after correcting the garble, your analogy is still dumb.

You seem to have entirely missed my point about the arts (and parks) being fundamentally different from the energy resource industry, in that they aren’t evaluated solely on the basis of how cheaply they can produce some easily quantified and traded profitable commodity.

Do you have any substantive response to that point?

90

Basically 'cos it’s a peasant culture and peasant leaders — such as Trump’s Mob — have always been suspicious of those things that used to be fostered by the gay and heartless aristocracy.

91

NO! I strongly disagree with this! It is, in fact, my principle objection to NEA funding (and a whole host of other federal programs), and there are lots of “Constitutional conservatives” that feel the same way. There are certain things that the Constitution authorizes the federal government to do. “Funding art” isn’t on the list. I wouldn’t object to California taxing Californians to fund a California Endowment for the Arts, but I do object the feds doing it at a national level because I believe it’s “unconstitutional”.

Poking libtards in the eye is just an ancillary benefit.

92

Please dial back the unnecessarily inflammatory rhetoric. A combination of “liberal” and the pejorative “retard” is hard to not construe as a slur against those that suffer from mental illness. While not as socially verboten as other slurs, I think it would be better to avoid such usage.

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93

“Promote the general welfare”.

Trolling is no more respectable in the real adult world than on this board.

94

That’ll earn you a warning, Ditka. We’ve previously discussed that such terms should be avoided.

95

Given that no court ruling seems ever to have been issued that supports your belief on this topic, what are you using to justify it?

Note that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution says that Congress has the power “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common defence and general Welfare of the United States”.

If you’re going to claim that federal arts funding is literally unconstitutional, you’re going to have to make a constitutionally valid case that it doesn’t fall into the extremely broad category of “providing for the general Welfare”, and I don’t think you can.

Yeah, that’ll show those annoying libtards who have the gall to try to provide old people in nursing homes with the joy and beauty of live chamber music. How dare they?!

96

Your linked article clearly doesn’t tell the whole story since they got a $8M refund but in general a tax break isn’t the same as a grant - to make use of a tax break you typically have to make an operating profit in the first place.

Oh look, is that a False Equivalence I see?

97

Apologies to those offended by my joke. Septimus had used that exact phrase (poking l******* in the eye) back in post #47 and I made a snarky comment based off that post. I’ll do my best to avoid doing so in the future.

98

What a difference scare-quotes make:

Still far more interested in hearing your rational justification for why you believe federal arts funding to be literally unconstitutional, though.

99

Or maybe, just maybe, both need to be fixed.

According to the CBO the U.S. is on track to have a debt to GDP ratio of 150% in 2047. Deficits rise from 2.9% of GDP to 9.8% in 2047.

Link.

The attitude of “Well, it is just a small percent of the budget! LOOK at all the other more expensive stuff!!?!?!?!?!?!” is an idiotic way to look at the budget. It is the attitude that ensures no program will ever be cut. It is the attitude passes our debt to our kids (Hey sonny, sorry the economy is absolutely fucked but me and your Mom got to see a symphony back in 2017 for free!).

Slee

100

This is a warning for accusing another poster of trolling. If you feel you must, the BBQ Pit is right around the corner.

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