Legal Commentary

Swatting the Mosquitoes

By TChris

You might enjoy David Obey's remark that Republicans, by focusing on trivial details in the stimulus bill, are behaving "like 1,000 mosquitoes to harass the majority." It's more like 188 mosquitoes in the House, but it must feel like 1,000 to House Democrats. Obey should invest in some bug spray.

In particular, Obey singled out Republican grievances that roughly $50 million appropriated to expand funding of the arts won't stimulate the economy or create jobs. What nonsense. Not only will it create jobs for artists, curators, musicians, actors, writers, and dancers, arts funding will create jobs for staff and maintenance workers at museums, theaters, publishing houses, galleries, arts centers, and places where public art is on display. Art also creates a demand for the raw materials from which the art is made and for performance spaces.

According to Michael Kaiser, head of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts:

"The arts as a totality in this country employs 5.7 million people ... so we're not a small sector of this economy. Our employment levels are important to this economy."

Franklin Roosevelt's Federal Arts Project "created work for 5,000 of America's best artists." It was a small but highly visible part of the nation's economic recovery in the late 1930's and early 1940's.

Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation objects that giving money to artists "doesn't increase the economy's productivity rate" because it "doesn't help workers create more goods and services." You might or might not view art as a service, but attending a play or concert seems at least as productive as getting a haircut. Economic stimulus isn't just about helping businesses build more widgets. Production is production, whether factory workers are producing widgets or artists are producing art.

Moreover, since the conservative solution to tough (or good) economic times is to cut taxes, it's difficult to understand Reidl's argument. Tax cuts may or may not create more goods and services, depending upon whether the recipients save or spend their extra money, but there's no reason to think they would stimulate the economy any more effectively than devoting an equivalent amount of money to arts funding.

Artists need jobs too, and the nation needs art. It's time to swat the mosquitoes who think it's more important to build yachts than sculptures.

Full post as published by TalkLeft on January 29, 2009 (boomark / email).