Public Subsidies Tarnish the Arts

Public Subsidies Tarnish the Arts

While visiting Wichita in October, I learned that city government subsidies for the arts is a contentious issue. I’d like to offer a perspective: Don’t do it. Art is too important to be dependent on politicians, and injecting politics into anything inevitably tarnishes it.

Those “studies” that purport to show X return on Y amount of government arts spending are a laughingstock among economists. The numbers are cooked and almost never compared to alternative uses of tax money. Even less frequently do subsidy advocates consider what people might choose to do if their earnings weren’t taxed away in the first place.

What if “public investment” simply displaces a certain amount of private investment? Arts subsidy advocates never raise this issue, but I know that I personally am far less likely to make a charitable donation to something I know is on the dole than to something that depends on the good hearts of willing givers.

And money that comes voluntarily from the heart is more meaningful than money that comes at gunpoint (taxes). For that reason I don’t believe in either arts welfare or shotgun marriages.