Presidential Election: 2012
- Thread starter Omnis
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I was never really addressing you specifically anyway until you suggested the parable.
And all I've done is to ask for people to back up their theories on getting rid of government. There are several simple questions there to answer.
Am I cynical? Yes. People are utterly blinded by their political affiliations. They support parties who act like complete infants in the midst of the power they've had bestowed upon them in office, and they stand in line every four years at the polls to do it all over again. Not surprisingly, the source of this embarrassment to our country is often the result of our politicians' own greed and pettiness.
And specifically concerning the arts (why I responded in the first place), slashing those funds directly affects income checks for art teachers, music teachers, theater professors, etc., at every level, up to the highest of academic environments. It directly puts many people out of work, and this also includes the effects of everything their unemployment would entail concerning our culture and society. I have colleagues at the University of Kansas who will soon be out of a job for this very reason, as an example.
The vast majority of art, music, and theater doctoral graduates are already looking at a next to zero chance of securing a tenure-track job at the university level, regardless of where they receive their pedigrees. People from top flight East coast schools are stuck in adjunct positions that have to be renewed every year, with no guarantees that it will actually occur, and with many not receiving benefits from their positions. What do you think is going to happen when you cut their lifelines even further? You have basically then taken a position as to say that our society does not need the arts. This is concerning education first and foremost, the fruits of which are seen in a rich culture. To believe that this is not needed and essential is to ignore the history of every other successful society that has existed with a degree of longevity.
This is the situation our country is already in NOW, and these pharisees in office want to cut that funding further, while at the same time talking out of their asses about the ideals of the Regan era, yet refusing to acknowledge the effect that the higher tax percentages the rich were paying during that time had on the economy. They want to own it all now, and make you (middle class) pay for them to do so. I would consider it an act of patriotism for a wealthy person to accept a tax increase in the name of bettering the country that provided their opportunity in the first place. I would literally desire to thank them, shake their hand, and pay them a respect. Likewise, I consider the current childish behavior of Republican stalemates over tax increases for the wealthy to be an act of treason, whether we choose to hold them accountable or not. That is not an extreme view. They are using the American political system to their own interests, not the American peoples'. If a billionaire whines about having to pay an extra $500k a year in taxes that would go to benefit the America people, they will never, ever have my sympathy. Likewise, any political candidate that suggests they would continue this trend will never have my support.
The biggest mistake people make is to think they are entitled to anything here.
Why are you here? You were lucky, there is absolutely no other reason whatsoever, and if you deny this fact you are lying to yourself. You have no more of a right to wealth and prosperity than any other person on this planet. You also have not a single validated right to set up borders and deny this opportunity to people from another country, whether you establish a law that says so or not. This country was stolen and pillaged from the true Native Americans in the first place, long ago.
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Motor City run by idiots - Detroit economy ruined.
That's the more tragic truth. It'd be pretty harsh on the honest Joes who just try to make a living. It's not their fault that their employers or the largest contributors to their metropolitan-wide economy are accountants. And bad ones, at that.
Keef
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It was an intelligent answer, you just didn't get it.
It's called "Draw stuff and sell it."
Somebody designed that AA logo a long time ago. Somebody is filthy rich because of it. Art is a perfectly good way to get through life - Kanye West is doing okay - but in order to make a living at it all these lazy artists must understand that nobody buys crap that nobody wants. If your stuff isn't selling so hot, consider getting a day job like everybody else and making your art and selling it as a hobby.
There is no government involvement required to make your art and sell it.
Utterly false statement. When we bring in a guest or "famous" composer to do seminars, masterclasses, etc., they have to be paid. That's the biggest incentive for them to come and do what they do outside of the fact that they love to do it, because guess what, they have to make a living. Now where does that money come from? Because let's not also forget that the person has to stay somewhere as well, which means that room and board has to be paid for, etc. Where does that money come from? I can tell you that it's generally around $5k to start with these things, especially when it involves a larger group of chamber musicians, etc.
Cutting funding for the arts instantly/directly cuts funding for art education at the university level. I guess we should start doing fundraisers instead?
Let me ask, where do you think that the current funding for the arts goes to? Do you not realize that when a person composes a new work for orchestra, that it takes on average six months, and that it involves 8-hour days of writing? That person doesn't need to eat in that time?
And you can't be serious... AA? Drawing logos for huge companies is your idea of art? That was done by a computer to serve the purposes of a monolith airline company. Jesus.
BobK
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Maybe because some people don't like the idea of their tax dollars being spent on a jar of piss with a cross in it?
Maybe it's because this just isn't the business of government?
How is that relevant? It's clearly of value to society to have outlets for food available. This is not a mandate for the government to open a chain of grocery stores, or even to subsidize an existing one.
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There is a lot of ideas on the tasks of the Government.
Where I'm more in favour of your approach, minimal intervention, there is "Bread and games": well-being of the population.
So by organizing some things that are not directly relevant, you occupy people and give a social rest that benefits society.
The issue with all these government initiatives is that it can go any direction and the link between spending and return is so far apart that you must ask how to justify it.
e.g.: The Belgian Revolution: Theatergoers who had just watched La muette de Portici at the Monnaie theater house, joined the uproar and ....
Joey D
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All looking at a picture will show is that racism ruined the city. After the race riots in the 60's, Detroit just never recovered at all. A huge majority of the white population moved to the suburbs and closed up their businesses in the city. This left minorities with no jobs and no means to move.
The one area that was a thriving center for blacks, Black Bottom, was really starting to grow and make it possible for more people to open businesses or find well paying jobs. They City of Detroit decided they wanted to run a freeway right through Black Bottom and pretty much destroyed everything. All the blacks who had money moved to the suburbs and the rest, once again, were left with no jobs. Those who couldn't move out where also relocated to a housing project.
You have to remember Detroit is the most segregated city in the nation and those racial tensions have made some pretty solid barriers, and I'm not just talking whites discriminating against blacks, it goes both ways along with other minority groups too. This has affected hiring practices and has contributed to Detroit economic downturn.
Yes, the auto industry contributed to the downfall too, but there is more to it than that. I mean people still buy cars and GM is still the number one automaker in the world, so not all is to blame on the industry for Detroit's problems.
Healthcare has now outgrown the auto industry, which should be good for the area's future. The population boom during the automotive glory days is now all starting to get into their 50's and 60's. This means that they are going to need medical treatment and the Detroit-Metro area is ready to treat them.
Probably 80% of the vehicles are American-made to some degree if you take into account Nissan, Honda, Toyota, Subaru, Hyundai and other foreign automakers that build there cars here. Classifying any vehicle that belongs to a specific country though isn't looking at the whole picture. Most cars have a pretty good deal of Chinese or Taiwanese parts on them, and I don't care if it's a Chevy or a Mercedes.
Depends on what part of the Motor City you go to since it encompasses the entire Detroit-Metro area. The northern suburbs are for the most part ran just fine. The city itself however is ran by idiots and for a while a thug. I don't know how much you heard about Kwame Kilpatrick, but he was one that really destroyed the cities image as of recent. He was the mayor from 02-08 and during that time he managed to spend millions from the cities budget on things like Escalades for his security goons and lavish parties, where he supposedly killed a stripper. He embezzled money, abused his power and made the news look like a daily soap opera with his love affairs.
The auto industry has been run by idiots for the past 15 or so years but they are starting to get things back in order. Ford is making huge progress and Chrysler is hiring thousands of people from the areas worse hit by downsizing, engineers for the most part. GM is still building so-so cars, but they are at least managed better now and it shows through their profits. And before anyone brings up the whole Chrysler is now an Italian company, I can assure you that it is still very much American. I live right down the road from the Chrysler HQ and it's thriving more than I can ever remember.
Our economy has been banged around quite a bit, and yes accounts have a lot to do with it. Greed is another glaring problem, I mean I can completely understand why a UAW worker wants $60,000 a year to put a car together when he sees engineers making $700,000 with another $500,000 bonus or even more when it gets to the executive level. No one in the auto industry gets paid a fair amount, they are either paid way to much or not nearly enough. But it's is more than just the auto industry, it's the entire area.
I am a critic of Detroit, the automakers and it's leader, but deep down it is my home town and I really think that they can make a comeback. We are already starting to show signs of a turn around, hopefully in a few years we will be really starting to make a trek by up to prosperity.
I never said I didn't appreciate it, however I acknowledge that there is a fundamental difference in approach to aesthetics between creating a logo for American Airlines and writing a symphony. Furthermore, one can be done in a matter of hours, while another can take a year or more to complete, and those kinds of artists need assistance the vast majority of the time.
Precisely the disgusting attitude that I am talking about. The vast majority of artists aren't pissing in a jar and calling it art.
And the basic ignorance that is often shared by people who wish to do away with funding for the arts is that in today's society the arts exist vastly in the academic setting. If you slash funding for the arts, you essentially remove it from the schools, which removes it from America's future, while at the same time putting people out of work. If you remove the arts from a society, it will surely decline. Slashing funding for the arts is directly supporting unemployment.
How many of you would then abolish artist colonies and residencies? For example, when people submit an example of their work, show promise as an emerging artist, and are awarded a stipend to spend a summer focusing exclusively on their art, with no distractions, at an artist colony or residency? These aren't important to a society?
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What do you think of Star Wars? No state funding, a little more then some hours,... Art will not disappear, but it will change. I agree with you that I would like more symphonies and less Rihanna on the radio, but why would the state be so good at determining who gets money? Commercial is not always quality, but at least it has objective criteria for investment.
Star Wars was created in a different economic setting, under a different social context and attitude. And the government doesn't have to be so specific about who gets the funds. As one example, make more funds available to the artist colonies so that they can bring in more artists, and let them decide who should be awarded those opportunities. Bear in mind that in most of these situations the artists are not actually getting paid. If anything, it amounts to a $100/wk. stipend for spending, with meals and board covered.
This is a serious issue in my line of work, because it literally affects hundreds of thousands of my colleagues and myself. The more funding universities have for the arts, for example, the more likely it is that artists will be employed. When a university takes a funding cut, the first thing to go are the arts, and that means unemployment. Meanwhile the football coach gets a $200k increase...
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Those are specific colonies chosen by ????
The point is if this was effective these colonies would have a strategy where they do get money from some more commercial activities that are based on the fundamental work done of some other artists. The known artist invest in the talents they recognise. You do not need the state. If the state provided something they should see it as an investment and get the returns back if the artist becomes world famous. In what you suggest they hand out money in the hope of what exactly?
Danoff
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Because funding private endevours such as art is not the role of government. Government exists to preserve your rights, not to provide you with art.
Precisely the opposite. Art has so MUCH value to society that it does not need government assistance.
Movies, music, graphic design, television, video games imagery, pornography, dancing, orchestra, ballet (the combination of the two), opera, comedy, architecture, trade dress, fashion... all of these forms of art are alive and well with private funding.
My dog just took part in a photo shoot for a greeting card. Sales from the greeting card will fund the photographer. I even bought a print of a painting done by an elephant in Thailand.
You know what doesn't (usually) sell? Art for its own sake. The famous photograph "Piss Christ", for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ
This was funded by US tax dollars. It's a photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. That's the kind of artwork that doesn't sell on its own, it needs a buyer who doesn't care what artwork is being produced, it needs a funding source that funds for the sake of funding.
Are we better off for it? Doesn't matter. Is it our government's responsibility to prop up artists who don't find a place for their art in the vast array of commercial opportunities for artists? No.
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Really? Says who? Government exists to serve the purposes that its people decide it should. You sell it short.
And let's just consider that your statement is entirely true. If it were actually carried out, we would likely not have the NFL, the NBA, or the MLB. Who pays for collegiate athletic programs? State funding. Who pays USC's football coach an exorbitant salary each year? Taxpayers.
But let's take that further. Why not remove mathematics? Why not remove social sciences, political sciences, etc.... and better yet the study of business from government funding? Because the arts are a part of academia, and funded by the state and federal governments the same as any other field you are hypocritically choosing to keep under the umbrella of governmental provision.
Again, this idea that art as being by nature concerned with commercial appeal, and existing as among some national collective of private entrepreneurs is a false one. It exists primarily in an academic context where it is pursued for intellectual reasons, not reasons of commercial value. If you cut funding for the arts you take people's jobs away, and you remove what remaining threads of academic and artistic culture this pathetic society has left.
If arts should not be funded by taxpayers, neither should business administration studies, cellular biology, sociology, etc., etc....
I'm afraid you are again mistaken. Artists are struggling more than ever in today's society. Very few artists can survive on art alone, and that number dwindles exponentially when it is concerning artists who pursue art "for art's sake", rather than for a commercial endeavour (see the AA logo).
Again, while this sounds like a valid argument, it is by the majority only applicable to specifically commercially-oriented forms. It's easy to see when you look at the most successful movies of the past year. Mission Impossible? Quite a different film in comparison to just about anything at Sundance. Graphic design? Again, art that is only allowed to survive based on commercial appeal.
Opera? I'm afraid that opera is rushing toward extinction along with a huge number of philharmonic orchestras. Any amount of research will show this immediately.
Dress, fashion? These are things that could easily be picked apart as lacking in artistic aesthetic at the plundering of television and commercial propaganda. They certainly aren't by and large created artistically, for art's sake.
This kind of thing is however a rarity, but the right wing uses it as a poster child for their own interests. The majority of artists in the field today are interested in collaborations with other artists and the pursuit of producing something relevant to society. Do certain things slip through the cracks? Yes. But this pales in comparison to the wastefulness of war, for example. It's a non-issue.
I disagree. Again, one example of poor artistic decision making does not speak for the national community of artists as a whole. It absolutely does not suffice as an accurate representation of the goings on of the diverse community of artists we have here.
And yes, we are better off because of people pursuing art for art's sake. People who are disinterested in these things are worse off. Far more concerning is the fixation with materialism in this country. Ask the same question of materialism: do we need it? They would like you to think so. They want you to create an identity for yourselves through the products you purchase, rather than through the pursuit of your own thinking.
Some fine examples of 'private entities' :
Corporate Farming Interests
Pt.2
Pt. 3
Interests of Corporate Pharmaceutical Companies in Recent Times
Where Are the Jobs?
And basically research anything showing that 'trickle down' only deludes a society's middle class opportunities.
Corporate Farming Interests
Pt.2
Pt. 3
Interests of Corporate Pharmaceutical Companies in Recent Times
Where Are the Jobs?
And basically research anything showing that 'trickle down' only deludes a society's middle class opportunities.
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Dapper
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Sach, you know facts don't hold up against pat rhetoric. 
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?_r=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?_r=1
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Keef
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As libertarians we often speak theoretically and use examples from long ago because free markets don't exist anymore anywhere in the world. We used to do it pretty well in the States but that has long since past and we wish to return back to the old system because it worked. People got complacent and submissive to the powers that be.
As for "where the jobs are", they're overseas because the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world. Our companies can't afford to stay in business here because it's too expensive. However, foreign companies often get special grants and tax breaks for building a business in the US - Even Mazda, the smallest of the Japanese companies, owns outright two factories inside the US.
Dapper, it's 12 year old common sense that government welfare systems not only promote dependency simply by existing, but they also compete unfairly against privately funded charities and help-organizations, driving them out of the market, which effectively forces people in need to submit because private charities are often more strict in deciding who their limited funds actually go to. Government doesn't have limited funds to provide welfare - it can simply print more money because the rules dictating standardized currency have been forgotten or overturned and the power to print money has been ceded from the Congress, who must answer to the People, to a Federal Reserve which has no public oversight.
The reason I have to use Federal student loans is because I can't afford a student loan from my credit union. I'm not even poor, and the cheap, easily accessible government loans have priced my own bank out of my market for student loans. The bank wants to give me a student loan, because with that loan I get an education, a high-paying job, and therefore am able to put more money in the bank and acquire a line of credit with which I can buy a house...both myself and the bank benefit. But the government has priced the bank out of that market. Now the government benefits from my success while I'm forced to become ever more dependent on them, and I can't afford to have it any other way.
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Sach, you know facts don't hold up against pat rhetoric.
I'm not entirely sure what that is supposed to prove. You mean the unsustainable government benefits programs that have nonetheless driven every alternative out of town are now required to be used by people simply because there are no alternatives?
Stop the presses.
Danoff
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Interesting. That's awfully arbitrary don't you think? The government exists to perform the will of the mob regardless of human rights?
Government was invented to protect rights - philosophically that is where it comes from. When government ventures into roles outside of that it starts violating rights. A good example of a rights violation is to forcibly seize property from people's bank accounts and hand it to a guy who took a piss and photographed it. That would be a property rights violation.
Interesting that you'd choose USC, a private university.
Do you think the NFL, NBA or MLB need public funding? Professional sports are absolutely rolling in cash. The top 10 highest rated television broadcasts are all Superbowls (if I remember correctly). Ah, here it is:
Gregg Easterbrook
Do we really need to be robbing taxpayers to be subsidizing these guys? Absolutely not.
Also, sports revenue from football for many large universities actually flows outward into other programs rather than vice versa. Even at public institutions football programs can support other programs financially easing the burden on taxpayers.
Well, now we're getting into another realm altogether. I was talking about direct funding of the arts, not funding through a university. But regardless, I'm a firm believer that wherever possible research and study should find private funding. This is definitely possible with art as there are copious commercial outlets for artwork.
There is a popular notion among many artists that art is not "pure" or real if it's commercially funded or commercial in nature. Art is not the only place where this occurs. At the graduation ceremony of my wife's law school class, the speaker announced that many of the graduates were going on to serve in various pro-bono capacities and then said, as an afterthought, "Those of you who have taken a position at a law firm shouldn't feel that you need to apologize"... but the implication was that... well... you do. And the law you will practice is worse and inherently impure (and you are a bad person). Absolutely retarded.
The art world should embrace and celebrate its commercial applications. That is, by the way, where the majority of artists and their various artworks live. The art world should be embarrassed that any part of it is begging for funding from the government (who take it from taxpayers by force). They should want government funding cut off and to be recognized as a real profession performing important work. Artwork is not a luxury provided to us by our government, it's an important service that we consumers crave and pay for directly.
As are all professions. But Hollywood (for example) is weathering the storm better than many industries. If you want to be concerned for someone's job, art is not the place to start. You might look at manufacturing.
Doesn't matter, as I stated earlier.
I like how you think that artistic expression is more valuable than materialistic expression. They're the same thing in different forms.
After reading this post do you expect that I will defend these programs? Do you think for an instant that I will say "oh farming, that's different"? I've dedicated massive rants on GTPlanet to farm subsidies alone.
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Sach, you know facts don't hold up against pat rhetoric.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/us/even-critics-of-safety-net-increasingly-depend-on-it.html?_r=1
The thing is Sach makes more sense than you do. Not to be mean be you haven't been the paragon of fact checking and you're just as extreme as some of those you oppose.
Dapper
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