Stimulate the Arts and Keep America Strong

[Manifestor_of_Light]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-bronk/stimulate-the-arts-and-ke_b_164731.html

In these times of economic crisis, it seems only rational that we should look back at our history to review what works if we want to create jobs and secure a strong economic legacy for future generations.

When faced with a collapsing economy, President Franklin Roosevelt tried to put Americans in all lines of work back on the job. Instead of singling out artists as somehow frivolous and unimportant to our nation's economy, he instituted a host of programs designed to put federal funds into the arts, employing America's creative talent and leaving a cultural legacy that endures still today.

The highpoint of this commitment was the Works Progress Administration's Federal One program, which put thousands of Americans to work in the arts. The government program was a lifeline for Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Orson Welles, Burt Lancaster, Sidney Lumet, Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, Studs Terkel, John Cheever, Saul Bellow, and thousands of other artists across the country.

These programs created much-needed jobs in the immediate term, but they did much more. They fostered great talents that otherwise may have been lost. The work of the many great artists supported by the government in the 1930s still benefits us today. Their contributions to our culture endure, and their successful careers resulted in employment for many others in the years that followed.

There are many of us who have had standard paper-shuffling office jobs and are not happy, and our talents are completely wasted.

I would be happy to do the artistic things I do for a subsidy to a non-profit arts corporation.

However, the troglodytes don't understand the value of the arts and sciences.

:banghead:

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. One of the First Class list of reasons to despise Republicans and conservatives.

They're either actively trying to destroy art, or actively trying to dumb it down and commodify it.

And republicans are just fucking evil enough to use the word "commodify".

[no_hypocrisy]

2. And the Republican Dies Commission was soon assembled to destroy the Arts Programs

by looking for the terrorists of their day, Communists.

The Commission is mentioned in the movie "The Cradle Will Rock" as one reason why the play-musical was methodically shut down.

[boobooday]

3. It's really hard to be an artist

Health care alone would make a huge difference for many.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. Arts will raise us up, work miracles and wonders, the real kind

So let's do!

[stopbush]

5. The strongest case that can be made for spending on the arts

has absolutely nothing to do with fostering culture or providing a lifeline to talent. It has to do with the tremendous return on investment one gets by investing in the arts.

Various studies show that every $1 spent on the arts generates anywhere from $1.85 to $7 in ancillary spending (ie: a person buys a $40 theater ticket, then spends $10 getting to the theater, then spends $50 at a restaurant next to the theater, etc). If a typical multiplier is thrown into the mix - (ie: calculating how a dollar spent on the arts multiplies its way through the community: $1 is given to a theater, which spends it on a carpenter, who spends it to buy lunch, who spends it to buy restaurant supplies, etc) - the ROI to the LOCAL community can be as high as 11 to 1.

Providing the lifeline and fostering culture is a side benefit to providing economic stimulus. The ROI one gets from arts spending is something that even the most-jaded R should be able to understand.

If the spreading of manure on the streets generated an 11 to 1 ROI, we'd all be knee deep in it right now. Too bad people don't see the arts the same way they see manure.

[nolabear]

6. Imagine a world without art

A society's identity is tied to its artistic expression. We teach our children their first lessons through song and rhyme, express our deepest feelings through creating or relating to art, we read Psalms (poetry) in church, decorate our houses (they don't HAVE to have colorful paint and beautiful landscaping, you know), hear music of one form or another almost constantly, whether it's radio, CD, background in television or video game, or commercials. We fill our homes with paintings and posters and document our lives with photography. We labor to bear our children and bury our dead with music and words.

The concept that art is anything less than a healing, enriching, nurturing essential part of our lives is literally insane.

And the idea that it doesn't require support is STUPID.