ยป Government Hatchets to the Ready!
Fresh off the sub-retard political move of cutting community theatre funding on Fringe’s opening night, when the audience was largest and most sympathetic, the government has turned its grossly-inept hatchets elsewhere.
Via Slog, which likes our art more than Seattle’s, a bunch of links. The gist? Now the government is cutting funding to artist co-ops. The money for Fringe has to come out of someone’s pocket.
If you’re looking for a (further) case study for how arts funding improves the economy here it is: My family is directly involved in those co-ops, namely in marketing their output nationally and internationally. The government funds artists, the artists paint, we recommend paintings to our clientele, the government gets taxes.
Ahh, the circle of life — or as economists call it “the velocity of a dollar”. Except in this case the government is trying to free ride on the artists, dealers, and their patrons. They want to take money out of the value chain without putting any in. All while in the middle of a recession. The mind reels.
Why am I not just advising artists to charge more, as I did Intrepid? Paintings and theatre tickets aren’t interchangeable economic goods: Some people will see a bad show; no one buys bad paintings.
Theatre productions have economies of scale working for them. Their product is show tickets and their model is to sell lots cheaply, enough to cover fixed overhead and per-seat, per-performance costs. Painters produce unique goods that sell for whatever people will pay for them. Their entire existence is overhead and their per-unit costs are degenerately fractional.
Artists, particularly new talent, need support from the government to work in BC. Vancouver is the most efficient place to do that for a couple of reasons (and another post). I’ve been to lots of these co-op spaces. They’re not Mile End, but they’re not grand-a-foot fauxlofts glassed into the sky either. There’s not a lot there to cut, certainly not 80%.
Anyway, I’m forced to stay on top of this. Lots to read and lots to discuss.
“no one buys bad paintings”
Are you kidding?!
Jared
9 Sep 09 at 9:32 am
The comments on that Slog article are amusing.
Jared
9 Sep 09 at 9:50 am
No one buys bad paintings from their point of view.
“Wow, I hate the composition, color, and lighting — really just loathe the whole thing. I’ll take it.”
Unlikely.
The more I think about this funding situation the more I suspect it’s a First They Came… problem. I should have defended Intrepid. Lesson learned.
Jack
9 Sep 09 at 1:27 pm
So economically, the difference between theater and painting is that you examine the goods up-front in painting? Sounds like what painters need is a better way to convince people their paintings are worth buying: marketing.
Of course the government is trying to free ride: that’s what taxes do. The alternative is to sell public services. (“Sure we’ll give you that grant, but everyone who sees your painting has to pay a fee…”)
Jared
9 Sep 09 at 4:43 pm
No, that’s just a convenient rubric for one difference. The big economic difference is the scale of production.
I meant “free riding” in the sense that, if you look at government funding as an investment and at taxes as recoupment of ROI, then they are not free riding. Once they stop investing and then assume the taxes will still come off the top they’ve started to coast on fumes…
Jack
9 Sep 09 at 4:50 pm
It’s not uncommon colloquially to look at government funding as investment (particularly education funding), but it’s extremely uncommon for accountants and economists to do it, no? I think we’d live in a very different world if all government funding decisions were made on an investment basis…
Jared
10 Sep 09 at 4:48 pm
Yeah, a world with rational economics. Good point: That clearly isn’t the case.
Jack
10 Sep 09 at 4:55 pm