There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value.
Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be.
I am reminded of Daniel James also known as Gwyrosydd, his bardic name. He was a Welsh language poet, who wrote probably the greatest Welsh language song, Calon Lân (means 'a pure heart'). People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later. It is a proud continuation of a bardic tradition in Wales going back probably thousands of years. It also encompasses the Welsh culture of choral singing, noted in early recorded history.
Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there.
I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day.
Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK.
When Nirvana first moved from their small Washington town to Seattle, they were able to pay their rent + everything else from working minimum wage jobs for 2 weeks a month. They had time to practice music and pursue their art.
In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire arts, music, and culture scene by raising the cost of living sky high.
Citation needed. "Cobain thought Seattle was too expensive a place to live. He couldn’t even afford his Olympia apartment, and was evicted for not paying rent while he was recording Nevermind.”[1] "They supported themselves through food stamps, sleeping on porches."[2]
I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills.
It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.
£1100/mo is about the minimum I could get by on in Edinburgh, yeah. It’s a room in a flat share with bills, £60/week on food, and £150/mo for “everything else”. It’s about as low as I think you could do. The person I replied to was talking about Nirvana in the 90s - when they were working part timeminimum wage jobs that’s roughly the life they’re living.
If you go to Liverpool (which significantly punches for musical history), it’s actually manageable on 20hr/weeek minimum wage.
You’re not talking sustaining a family or anything, but that life has been gone for 40 years at this point.
> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids.
In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation.
Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?
The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price.
You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works.
The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort.
By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.
Just like in the US, there are a ton of homes in Ireland just sitting vacant. Supply isn't nearly as large a problem as affordability. Ireland introduced a vacant homes tax to try to help, but it seems they haven't gone far enough.
That's because, in the places where housing is expensive, it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. It's a pipe dream that you can out build demand in these places. Reducing prices of housing in nice places to live (by any means, including building) will only result in more demand up until that insatiable demand is satisfied.
Nice places to live can't support all the people that want to live there.
Because demand is, for all intents and purposes, insatiable, the dollar value of housing/property isn't based on supply and demand because supply can't practically be increased to affect demand. Instead, the price is related to what a prospective buyer can afford to pay _every month_ and, thus, is related to interest rates. Interest rates go down, prices go up to the point where a prospective buyer's mortgage payment would be the same.
People who bring up the (un)affordability of housing are never talking about Oklahoma, they're talking about the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City, Seattle, Portland, etc. All places that are so desirable, they can't practically support everyone that wants to live there.
> it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there.
I can't figure out how to make the math make sense even if I were to build a house in the middle of nowhere. Time and materials is the real killer.
Some day, when AI eliminates software development as a career, maybe you will be able to hire those people to build you houses for next to nothing, but right now I don't think it matters where or how many you build. The only way the average Joe is going to be able to afford one — at least until population decline fixes the problem naturally — is for someone else to take a huge loss on construction. And, well, who is going to line up to do that?
"Built in 1954" doesn't sound like new construction. Of course you can buy used houses at a fraction of the cost. That's nothing new. Maybe you missed it, but the discussion here about building new to make homes more affordable.
It is not like I'm homeless. I would be the one upgrading, except I don't see how the numbers make sense.
But you're right: The cost of new construction anchors the used market. Used housing is so expensive because new housing is even more expensive. But we already knew that.
If one was freely able to move about the entire world you may have a point. Especially given current events, I am not sure the country in which that house is located would take kindly to many of us moving there. In a more practical reality you're not going to find anything for anywhere close to that price even in the middle of nowhere, never mind somewhere where everyone wants to live. That is where earlier comments suggest building more housing would help.
Except it is not clear who can afford new construction either. It is even more expensive.
> What part of your idea was supposed to stop that happening
The part where people see their money burning away paying maintenance and tax on deteriorating assets.
Why are people holding assets unused?
Because they don't believe that the city will allow sufficient development to allow them to purchase like-assets in the future if they chose to reinvest and the carrying cost is minimal because council taxes are trivial relative to the value of the asset. If my research is correct, Kensington council taxes are under 10k USD per year.
No, it’s not that we can only afford one. It’s that we’re choosing to ring fence funding for one while allowing the others to erode in real terms.
Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises.
The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.
Ireland’s affordability problems are almost exclusively centered around its housing crisis and they need to just commit themselves to over-supply induced wealth destruction for the landlord class and older generations. Thankfully, there demographics also support such a move.
Baby steps. Everyone deserves it, but getting there in one step is politically impossible almost everywhere in the world. Nobody’s saying only the arts deserve subsidies. It’s just easier to justify. But if we want everyone to have basic income, we need to applaud whenever it happens, even if it’s a small subset, and argue they deserve it and that we should have more of it. Complaining about the unfairness of artists being subsidized demonstrates and adds to the political difficultly. If we accept that it’s unfair for a subset, then we might never get basic income since the rich don’t need it and many don’t want it.
Why do you say that? Isn’t the fact that it got approved evidence that it was easier to justify subsidies for artists?
I don’t know what you mean at all, why is this “so polarizing”? A lot of the art world already runs on subsidies, and it’s well known that it’s more difficult to make a living as an artist than your examples of jobs that come with steady pay, even if it’s low. Solo artists don’t get any steady income at all, and many have to take other jobs in order to support their art work. The general public where I live (in the US) is absolutely more willing to fund the arts than to fund generally low paying steady-income jobs, especially steady-income jobs that are already funded via taxes like teachers and firefighters. This is why I claim it’s easier to justify subsidizing artists. What is the reason you claim it’s not easier to justify, and where is the evidence your claim is true?
Good question. The public consultation was 97% in favour, although half the respondents were receiving the pilot payment at the time.
Following the announcement of Budget 2026 last October, I think this expenditure came into sharp focus, as the budget was considered to be almost hostile to workers and families, and anecdotally I think it has become more controversial since.
>Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK.
It's a bad scheme, it divide's your population into people who have to create "wealth", and people who create "art".
Yes creating art (or preserving rare potatoes[1]) should be supported by your government if it's not survivable in a capitalistic society, however having different rights because of your occupation is not better then the middle ages.
Most people do create wealth. That is exactly how those wealthy people become wealthy - by having someone create wealth for them, and then appropriating most of it.
What fraction of that time goes to subsidizing the exponentially wealthier? We could just tax the hell out of the rich and and make better lives for the vast majority of us, while wealth hoarders still get to “win” at the game of life.
>Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth.
That's what i meant with the potatoes, the government pays for the field with the rare potatoes, and the standardized potatoes make wealth.
>So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?
With free housing (art community's), tax free stuff (for small to medium sales etc) like it's done today. And to be honest i think 99.5% of artist dont do a full-time-art-job, most of them do other stuff too...and that's good.
Is my friend who plays the didgeridoo in his free time now an artist if he declares it's suddenly his full-time occupation?
One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state).
On a base your are right, not everything that's good for societies is compatible within a capitalistic system. But this is just a complete wrong step.
>But giving housing or tax breaks needs lots of admin. Isn't that less efficient?
Art community's are most always self managing, i would argue finding out who makes art is much more complicated.
>Giving housing forces people to live in certain places.
No one is forced to take free housing or being an artist, if you want something for free you have to play by rules.
>like the people don't know what they need
True, but why are people who are artist different from anyone else, that's my critique. Why is creating art more important then preserving art, being a scientist, a rare-potato-farmer, a retro-game-preserver...or a small town politician?
> True, but why are people who are artist different from anyone else, that's my critique.
I don't think it is helpful to frame it in terms of, 'sure they should get it, but what about other people doing public good? Since the others can't get it, the artists shouldn't'. How about saying, 'this is a great start, how do we get a broader scheme for other philanthropic causes'?
>I don't think it is helpful to frame it in terms of, 'sure they should get it, but what about other people doing public good? Since the others can't get it, the artists shouldn't'.
I think it's the only logical way, same right for everyone, occupation is not a factor for additional rights.
> Is my friend who plays the didgeridoo in his free time now an artist if he declares it's suddenly his full-time occupation?
Is this really a risk, given UBI is generally minimal? Anyone who wants to live on it full-time to support their art, whatever it may be, is welcome to it. It's not like they're sitting back and getting rich, here.
> One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state).
Because "UBI for everyone who deserves it" is a much harder, bigger step, and fighting against small wins because they don't include literally every single outlier case you can think of is absurdly non-productive, not to mention that it's a vacuous counter-argument.
> create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth
the wealth in this case isn't monetary, it's material production, the productive work of people who create material objects, including your food and shelter. If it was about monetary stuff the government would just print the artists whatever amount of money they need. But that money has to be spent to buy from those who produce the stuff the artists need to live. Who's sponsoring the wealth producers?
The UBI money gets spent by the artist though, some on food, probably more on rent. The rent money probably gets hoarded by the landlord, the other goes to people selling real objects. That is real money back into the economy.
Guess what helps provides a reason for people to want to keep the world running?
We've seen what happens to pieces of the world that prioritize economic production over everything else, and it isn't pretty. We have a number of laws and regulations preventing that sort of production at all costs behavior.
It's the same as cities/governments spending on free public basketball courts/tennis courts/running tracks. I come from a country with none of those things, and the difference that makes on the average fitness/skill level of the population is massive compared to places where those things exist.
Both basic income, and public sporting infrastructure have a significant (but not unreasonable) upfront cost, but the payoff in even 2 years time will be massive. Provided the economics check out, there's no reason to not give it a shot.
Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread?
What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return.
Because if it would be equal, then one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.
You don't have to wonder whether or not it returns value to the tax payer. The Irish government already monitored the pilot program for two years, publishing all of the details and findings. [1]
"The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"
This came about as a mixture of greater economic activity from participants, cultural impacts that saw public-facing artist activities increase, and improvements to wellbeing of participants that reduced their requirement for psychological interventions by the state. The state also predicts that the further roll-out of this program will benefit consumers with lower prices for artistic works, as there will be more supply overall.
The scheme has been quite popular here in Ireland. Given the history of Ireland when it comes to art (both in the sense of spoken and written word, and in other mediums), it makes sense to introduce a scheme like this to safeguard and uplift those who produce art.
Thanks for linking the CBA. I hadn't seen that before
> "The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"
Okay, so if you read the CBA, the net fiscal cost of the pilot was:
* Gross pilot cost (2021–2025): ~€114 MM
* Tax revenue: ~€36 MM
* Social protection savings: ~€6.5 MM
* Net fiscal cost: ~€72 MM
So for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received 37¢ in fiscal return. So it's an unambiguous fiscal cost, a net loss.
Of the "Total monetised benefits", €80 MM of the benefit was in "wellbeing gains", as measured by the WELLBY test, which is calculated based on a single survey question:
> “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?
The €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", which is the sole decided of whether this pilot was a net positive or a net negative to society, is because on average, the 2,000 pilot scheme participants had a very approximate 0.7–1.1 increase in score when asked the above question during the pilot as compared to before the pilot. Each 1 point is deemed to be worth €15,340.
That's it. There's no economic return - it's a proven economic cost. There's no proven social benefit. No demonstrated effect on art prices or availability.
The pilot was successful - if you consider it to have been - solely because the artists who received payments as part of the pilot had an improvement in Wellby satisfaction score when they were asked via survey. If you remove this factor, the pilot was an abject failure.
Nicely set out. I completely agree with you. I'm also pretty certain - and I say this both as a lover of the arts and as a taxpayer - that I will see no benefit whatsoever in my life, or to society in general, from the works produced under the aegis of this programme.
You know what would have been a worthwhile use of that €114 MM? Improving the pay and conditions of our naval personnel. That way, the nation might now be able to put more than one patrol boat out to sea at a time.
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
In this case isn't it more that:
Every sculpture that is made, every picture drawn, every bed left unmade, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
From where I'm sitting, this is theft, its forced wealth redistribution, from people that are potentially already struggling,to people that choose to slum it as artists. Its not even means tested, this really will result in money transferring from those on the edge of poverty to rich art school kids.
There's currently 16,000 homeless / at risk people in Ireland, including 5000 children [0]. I can think of at least one better use for that money.
I think you two are using different definitions of society.
In this comment society seems to mean "the government, and its tax revenue profit/loss statement"
In the previous comment society seems to be construed more broadly and encompass both non-economic activity and economic activity outside the collection and disbursement of tax funds.
> In this comment society seems to mean "the government, and its tax revenue profit/loss statement"
No, that's not correct. I specifically separated the pure economic impact from the society impact, but the only societal impact used to quantify the success of the pilot scheme is that the people paid a basic income by the scheme had higher life satisfaction as measured by a single survey question.
That is the basis used by Government to claim that it's a social benefit.
Personally, I support the arts and I think that culture, health, housing accessibility, safety, fitness, happiness, and companionship are all better measures of a society than GDP or other fiscal metrics.
Right now, we have a health, housing, and social crises desperate for resources - resources that are allocated exclusively through Euro budgets. This pilot scheme has not demonstrated any cultural or social impact at all. Only the aforementioned increase in recipient satisfaction.
Meanwhile people in dire situations face multi-year waits for operations, or dying of a treatable stroke/MI due to a lack of ambulances, or death by suicide as the mental health services are overwhelmed.
Is the WELLBY score of these artists more important the WELLBY score of parents awaiting their kid's operation for the second or third spring? Or burying their children? Or raising them in hotel rooms?
Ireland is only economically successful. We are failing our citizenry abysmally outside of fiscal terms and basic income for artists should be allocated while hundreds of more pressing needs are left unmet.
> Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here.
From reading your comment I think this observation applies to your own understanding, not the gp's.
> whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. [...] one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.
You might not see it but this is effectively equivalent to thinking only money has value, because you're describing a system whereby value is defined by money. Your dichotomy assumes anything that cannot be sold has no value, & anything that is sold is only as valuable as its price. The emergent conclusion from that formula is that only money has value.
It's worth noting that it also follows from this that value is defined by people with purchasing power. If for example the only cohort who value any given piece of art cannot afford to financially support the artist creating said art, not only is the art & the artist's work without value, but by extension so too are the perspectives, autonomy & - ultimately - the lives of that cohort without value.
You’re making a logical leap, how can you say only money has value when things are worth money? That item has value equivalent to the money given for it, therefore that item has value. It’s likely you’d be able to find people who are willing to trade some electronic device you have for another equivalent one (some iPhone for some Android) without exchanging any money. Money is just the measure of value, it’s like saying something cannot be 5ft tall without the existence of a measuring tape. Societies have existed before money they were just inefficient.
> That item has value equivalent to the money given for it, therefore that item has value.
> Money is just the measure of value
Money is the measure of market value. If you believe it's the measure if inherent value, you believe anything outside of the market has no value. E.g. that human lives have no value outside of waged labour (or heck, even slavery).
The point here is the monetary value is a model of value, not the definition of it. If you are defining an item's value by it's market price, then you believe what the gp was describing: that "only money has value" (since it defines all value).
> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.
Because the skills and effort needed to market and sell your art to an audience are not equal to the skills and effort needed to produce good art [1].
I agree that there could be other complementary or better solutions compared to this scheme. But as long as the above premise is true, not every good artist will want or be able to sell well.
[1] However you define this. Supposedly, Van Gogh was a lousy salesman, but a good artist.
Because we use taxes as a process to crowdsource funding more effectively. That's literally the entire basis for it. Might as well ask why "only the taxpayers who care about a new highway can raise funds to buy it" and then we're back in some weird, system of no central government because someone can always claim "why not just like, let people donate money" because it's a simplistic cliche that appeals deeply to people who aren't quite clever enough to work out just how much they've benefitted from the system as it's been constructed.
> Is this passive aggressive insult really necessary?
I think simplistic cliche's deserve derision - if you don't like that, perhaps don't use them? It's hardly a shot at the writer to suggest that what he wrote is mediocre.
> I’m sure you will agree that not everything that everybody wants can get funded. The debate here is how to draw the line.
No, your argument was that I should fund things myself directly. I pointed out that that's an inane and boring argument. If you want to debate other things, then do that in the first place.
> so I’m struggling to follow your argument.
It might help if you re-read your own arguments first, instead of trying to make them into new ones. Things people want funded by the government get funded when they vote for them to get funded either directly or via representatives - if you don't like those things, there is a clear way to change the algebra. In no case is suggesting people just like, "pay some extra taxes, man" a useful are additive observation.
Then it would be a popularity contest and depend on the artists' ability to market themselves in a capitalist space. The one with the best TikTok channel would get the money. That doesn't lead to having diverse, interesting, and challenging art.
That’s not what they’re saying. Only the funding source would change; the funds would still be split evenly to anyone who meets the criteria of being an artist.
How does the government solve this problem? Why can’t a private organization replicate that? How was art produced previously without the existence of these programs?
The same way it solves all problems: poorly, yet better and more fairly than corporations do.
> Why can’t a private organization replicate that?
Private organizations are driven by profit motive. Profit motive is usually in a negative correlation with fair results in these sorts of situations. If you mean a church or non profit, then, because those don't represent a region of people, and there's no petition mechanism to change their behavior if they're bad. "We'll stop giving them money" great so you're back to my original point then: profit motive.
> How was art produced previously without the existence of these programs?
Hard to say, but there sure is a lot of it, from as long ago as ten thousand years, so personally I think it's safe to say there were lots of reasons beyond either an S Corp or 501(c) buying popular art, or a liberal democracy funding it.
I didn’t really follow your argument about non-profits.
Clearly the artists somehow managed to convince government to support the scheme, why can’t the same people form a non—profit and convince ordinary members of the public to support the same scheme in a non-profit structure?
That way we have a smaller government, lower taxes, and the people who care can directly spend their money on addressing this problem - rather than have their money going to taxes where it might be spent somewhere they don’t agree with!
Nobody has to argue about money being spent on things they don’t care about. Everybody is happy.
There are many things that are valuable to people, but which they would rather not pay for. They include public goods and externalities, like infrastructure and education and a reasonable amount of military. It makes a lot of sense that people would rather enjoy art for free if they had the option, and since the majority of art experience can be easily duplicated and transmitted, why pay for it yourself? There is also another benefit of art stimulating further intellectual and creative development of a society, perhaps yielding second order benefits that are hard to quantify. Thus overall, it can make a lot of sense for government to pay for art as a society.
> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money
"Public goods" like parks, museums, bridges, roadways, transit, nature preserves, community spaces, and public safety services produce both direct value to their immediate users as well as substantial diffuse value to their community. Direct value can be captured by user fees, tolls, subscriptions, etc but capturing diffuse value is challenging. A park raises surrounding property values even for people who do not visit the park. Good transportation infrastructure increases the value of surrounding land and and productivity per capita even for nonusers. Relying solely on user fees may force some of these entities to close or fall into disrepair, thereby reducing overall value by substantially more than it would have cost to maintain them. And in some cases shifting the cost burden to direct users substantially lowers the diffuse value, for example back when fire fighting companies would let houses burn unless their owners paid them, ultimately resulting in more overall community fire damage.
In these cases, subsidizing these public services with taxes (optimally Georgist land-value taxes) is an economically rational decision.
One could plausibly argue that artists similarly produce diffuse value e.g., raising the profile of their nation or culture, making their neighborhood a more desirable place for people with money. Not only do artists typically struggle to collect a share of this diffuse value, as renters the very value they create often ends up pricing out of their community. I could imagine cases where it is a net benefit for a government to subsidize such entities if such subsidy is less than the fraction of the diffuse benefit that ends up being collected by taxes.
I have no insight as to whether this scheme in particular is net positive, please see sibling posts for that. I'm just explaining that such arrangements are both economically rational and extremely common in high-functioning societies.
Your argument makes sense, but a park has a measurable scope. We all want it to be X sqft, with Y trees, and it will cost Z dollars. Are you going to force artists to make the specific art that the community is in need of, or can they just do nothing?
Expect something? Yes. Enforce it? Not sure for the first tranche, but make it a prerequisite for continued funding.
One big obstacle is, of course, how to define what to expect from each artist. For example, you can't expect the same level of output from sculptors and musicians. Another big obstacle is obviously the expected quality of output.
I don't pretend to know the solutions to either of those obstacles, but they should be surmountable [1]. I think it's fair to expect some output in exchange for funding, but it doesn't have to be a high expectation.
Personally, I like the idea of hiring artists as full-time with particular projects in mind [2], but intentionally leaving ~50% of their time to personal projects.
[1] Perhaps artist communities themselves could discuss ways to make this exchange work for all parties.
[2] Murals, restorations, beautification of public spaces, etc.
I don't think there's any evidence that those obstacles are surmountable, unless it's something like the Pope telling Michaelangelo to paint a ceiling. A bridge has defined scope and budget (ish) and a defined benefit attached to it, which many people will sign off on before it is commissioned, and it might take years to do, but it will also serve the local population for potentially hundreds of years in a practical way.
Actually, you provided an example where the obstacle was somehow surmounted [1].
The expectation doesn't have to be too specific or unrealistic. If you agree on some common ground [2], everything else can be fair game for the artist.
Your analogy with the bridge would apply if art also had a minimum viable version. Collapsed to its functional requirements, you could say that visual art is something to look at. But I doubt either party, especially the funding body or the public, would be happy without inserting some quality requirements (i.e., what makes something nice to look at).
Many artists do commissions, so you can see this as a commission with deliberately underspecified requirements.
[1] I won't get into the disagreements between the Pope and Michelangelo, and it's certainly not an example of a good contract, but we can assume that both parties were somewhat satisfied in the end.
[2] For example, both parties need to like it. Or the patron doesn't have to like it, but it needs to appeal to some public audience.
> Are you going to force artists to make the specific art that the community is in need of, or can they just do nothing?
My understanding is that the Irish scheme doesn't force any specific work for the three year period, though I'd expect any artist who takes a three year, ~$60k grant and uses it to do literally nothing may find it hard get a grant in the future, potentially ending their art career. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if a few recipients end up doing that, in which case it's an economic question as to whether the net loss from such freeloaders is more or less than the cost of the bureaucracy necessary to prevent them.
The economic question will be whether the Irish taxpayer gets enough value out of the art produced to warrant its total cost, including artist subsidy costs, administrative cost, etc etc.
Note that my response above was solely responding to the question of how to handle freeloaders.
Of course the more fundamental question is whether the whole scheme is even worthwhile. Clearly the Irish government believes that their trial in 2022 demonstrated a positive financial return, but my guess it that it will take decades before we can truly answer this question.
Nobody pays to view a mural, but a lot of people view it, and property values go up as a result. It cost the artist time, effort, and money to make it, and if you hire an artist specifically to make a mural, it's prohibitively expensive for an individual.
Better to amortize the cost across the population and have public works. Like we do for infrastructure. Seems to work just fine.
Isn't this arguing indirectly for national taxpayers to prop up the value of certain properties? Why not just have a local collaboration with a local artist and people pay directly?
Do you think people would do the following arrangement; work for free until the business becomes profitable (which could be never), but then get a much higher share of the labor margin?
It's an interesting question, but it's too narrowly focused. Surely we can think of more risk-reward structures than just "founding engineer?" What about worker co-ops? Revenue sharing agreements? Profit sharing? Equity on top of salary? Base pay plus performance?
Capital owners aren't the only ones taking a risk, laborers do as well. Why is it that only capital risk is considered?
State funding is socialism, I thought we weren't about that here? Anyway that's basically what this Ireland thing is about.
SBA loans are given at the whim of a bank, who is looking for a very strong guarantee of return on investment. It can also come with terms that restrict business behaviors - this is HN, just imagine Bain capital gave you ten million dollars, do you then get to run your business in a way that targets a healthy, sustainable profit margin with albeit flat growth line?
Anyway that's boring and been done before. Surely after ~300 years of plain Jane capitalism we can start playing with more exotic modes of organization? Why do only the banks get to invent new financial instruments to destroy markets with?
I'm not sure why taking away money you could spend on goods or put into savings is ok when your boss does it, but not ok when the government does it. At least the government builds you a road in return.
Right, that's my point, unless you can work at a co-op, you have no say in how much value from your labor is extracted and given to someone else, and given the way society is designed, it's basically impossible to live without nonconsensually giving up the majority of your labor's value to someone else.
Whereas with taxes, if you don't like them, you can elect a different politician. Look at the Americans, they do it all the time, their tax rates go all over the place.
I want roads, libraries, firetrucks, and for my poop to vanish into oblivion when I pull the toilet handle. I don't really want my money to buy my boss a new car.
Who gets to be an artist? I want to be an artist now. Is it people who go to certain universities with art degrees? Can any working class guy decide he wants to pursue art and get the basic income?
Another question is would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks? In the 1800s most of the great literature was written by normal guys writing on the side, they need that experience to make great art. Heart of Darkness is never going to be written by an academic. Hemmingway doesn't write anything without his experiences in Italy, Spain and France in WWI, Civil War and WWII, if he was just a beat reporter forever, all of his great inspirations don't amount to much. Tolstoy and Doestoyevsky are notable exceptions.
Just to answer the question in this specific case: yes, a working class guy can decide he wants to pursue art (in quite a broad range of forms), and he can apply for the basic income once he can show that he is working as an artist. The artists who ultimately receive the payment will be chosen randomly once they meet the criteria to apply in the first place (which, again, is simply that you are working as an artist—exhibiting, publishing, performing, whatever "work" might mean in your case). There is a fixed number of people who can receive it in each round (I think it's 2500 people, cycling every three years), and those people are picked by lottery; if you receive it in one round, you cannot apply for the next. This, and in fact no arts funding in Ireland, has anything to do with certain universities or art degrees. This scheme is far from perfect, but these vaguely leading questions (so common to all commentary on public funding for the arts) are clearly irrelevant.
As for the second question ("would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks"), well, life and art really are too varied to draw the kind of conclusions the following comment implies.
You're saying the quiet part out loud. Clearly we just need to pay people to "make art" all day long on the backs of taxpayers who will most likely never see the "art" or derive any value from it.
"Dad why are you working your hands off? Well... the government decided to pay people to "make art" instead of working. How come? Well... nope I have no fucking idea"
All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable.
Living in a one room dwelling, with a shared bathroom is unpleasant, but safe, warm, and has a bed. Having enough for basic food, but no luxuries.
My point is, welfare(not disability, welfare) should sustain. Keep safe. Alive. Free from elements. But absolutely be something a normal person wants to escape from.
And there will always be those happy with the above, and .. well, OK.
But whether artist or whomever, basic living in hard times should be there for you.
The person in my description would be housed, fed, safe. To this you say, we're well beyond the scarcity that would require this.
Believe it or not, people still work to produce almost everything. While aided with machinery, farmers are human beings and work. People actually physically build houses. Everything that you own, is assembled or manufactured from components and parts that come from human labour.
If someone is going to live off the backs of the work, and effort of other human beings, then certainly they should not live in luxury. They should, in fact, feel as if they are putting other people out, which in fact they are.
I've already expressed a situation where I want nobody to starve. Where I want nobody to not have a roof over their head, if they're having a difficult time, where I want them to be safe.
This is an extremely generous, extremely kind, extremely compassionate thing for me, or anyone else to do. To give some of my daily effort to help others, is laudable.
To this you say, why don't you give more? To this you say, it's not enough to be housed, but why doesn't somebody get a free large screen TV too? To this you say, why doesn't somebody get more than just the basic necessities? Can't they have steak, a large home, all, provided by the efforts of others?
Do you not realize how completely selfish that is? It's completely out of touch with the whole dynamic of people working to produce goods, and other people just getting those goods without effort.
Why would I ever do work if I can just do art? I mean I have worked in the creative industries so I have successfully done art for others but why would I do art to serve others if I can just do what I want and live comfortably.
Or is it more of have to apply to be subsidized and the government chooses what art is worth subsidizing, which won’t result in good art, more just government building lobby bad art.
There really is not an objective criteria to find who is and it’s not an artist. The proposed system makes a purely political decision out of who sits at a desk doing unsatisfying but necessary tasks, and who gets to sit at home and smoke dope all day and put out a painting or a song twice a year. Not very fair to the tax donkey fixing the plumbing.
Don't tax labor, or capital which helps assist labor with performing economic activity ,or at least tax as little as possible.
Instead, focus on taxing scarce resources, especially since we cannot make more of it. If it's natural resources coming out of the grounds such as minerals and oil, it becomes a severance tax.
If we're talking about occupying land, then it's a Land Value Tax.
You could also tax negative externalities like pollution or traffic congestion.This is known as a Piguovian tax.
People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later
I wonder how far are we from a song that is entirely generated by AI and becomes as loved as a song created by a human, and is still sung/played by people decades later? It feels weird to even think about it.
If AI does get as good as humans at creating art (I think it might), what happens then? Will human generated art be still as respected/valuable? Will humans even bother creating art at that stage?
On the topic of basic income - people seem to have strong opinions on both sides. I guess time will tell, but there isn't anything wrong in experimenting, at minimum. To those who strongly oppose UBI - don't we already give bailouts, huge tax breaks, subsidies to entire industries etc, to the extent of rewarding bad behavior (criminal behavior even) - like the one that caused 2008 crash? Why is corporate handouts okay but not UBI?
I hope one day you are able to acknowledge all the people in this world that live for purpose instead of for making Lumberg’s stock go up half a point.
people working for corporations produce things, I think you'll find the incorporating docs, and the property owned do not produce things by themselves.
I wonder, can we not turn all threads into a "when will AI do this creative thing better than humans".
Humans need basic income (or at least resources) and to have culturally valuable work to do. Art and craft esp as a form of human expression seems like we should ASSUME that humans want to do this, that we as a society value the human energy that goes into it.
Yes, humans want to make art. But most humans would also want their art to be seen, appreciated at minimum. Would be nice if they can make a living out of it.
I am not trying to turn all threads into AI debate, but AI threat to art is a legit concern. If AI mass produces art at comparable quality level to humans, it would be near impossible for humans to compete for other humans' attention. If nobody sees my art, would I still make art? Maybe some humans will, because creating art makes them happy and they don't care if anyone sees their art or not. But many humans will give up
> Will human generated art still be as respected/valuable?
I would hope that humans would always value human generated art, but these days it seems that many businessmen and AI bros do not. Perhaps they are not human.
You can only tax people so much before it's too much.
effective tax rates
0% ... not realistic outside very unique circumstances.
25% ... feels fair to me.
33% ... still fair but yeah 1 out of every 3 days worked you start to feel that.
50% ... the border of fair and unfair. if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.
Now, when you are near that border of fair and unfair and then you see John Q Artist getting his whole list comped using tax money that pushes the somewhat fair into unfair territory real fast.
Now, we already have situations similar to this in most countries either from subsidies, gov't spending you don't agree with, corruption, waste, etc.
All of that should be reduced but when you see your neighbor living free while you slave away you feel that differently.
Which tax rates? We have dozens. What determines fairness is how the resources in our society are allocated once all is said and done. Income, tax rates, and even money itself is just an abstraction.
> if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.
How fairly you made that money in the first place and what you get in return in the form of government services makes all the difference.
> What determines fairness is how the resources in our society are allocated once all is said and done.
I propose allocating upfront the work, so that those who disagree don't have to contribute into the "done" part of those who allocate it in a weird way.
This is in no way a "if you're homeless just buy a house" argument, it's a "you can't have it both ways, pick a lane and stick to it" argument.
You want to unilaterally decide that you don't want to pay much tax on income, billionaires decide that they don't want to pay much tax on capital gains, yet both of you want to continue living in a society where you can buy cheap bread baked from flour milled from wheat grown on subsidized farms, heavily reliant on public infrastructure, and you want to drink clean water and drive on public roads, all of which is paid for through taxes that you want to opt out of, and somehow you don't see a problem with that?
You can't pick and choose parts of society that benefit you and opt out of your duties, that's not how society works. All of those parts that you don't see value in are essential to someone else.
For select megacorps that have the luxury of being in a business that lets them structure themselves that way, sure.
For the laboring peasantry it's a very different story (though the actual rates vary, this goes for most "tax havens"). Ireland in particular has a high VAT so if you spend a lot of your income on consumption (which most individuals do) you will get very screwed by that.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientist... - "An independent scientist (formerly called a gentlemen scientist) is a scientist with a private income who can pursue scientific study independently as they wish without excessive external financial pressures."
Including: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (Evolution), Ben Franklin, Robert Boyle (Boyle's gas law), Oliver Heaviside (electromagnetic theory, co-axial cables), Alexander von Humboldt (established modern Geography), Thomas Jefferson, Leopold Kronecker, Alessandro Volta (voltaic pile battery)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist - "Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. "
Including "Charles Babbage, Henry Cavendish (discovered Hydrogen), Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Thomas Young (Young's modulus of elasticity, eyeball focusing), Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen)
Rene Decartes "arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life."
And basically any tenured professor paid to do whatever interests them, or academic or researcher, especially mathemticians, hired and paid for blue sky research, all the places like Bell Labs that HN loves.
The majority of great works created by the ruling classes of Athens or London at the height of both cultures ascendency is a major counterexample. Maybe we just had bad luck as to today's ruling class.
What does the past have to do with the present quagmire we find ourselves in?
Surely no one would intentionally suggest we pay people to sit around with the hope they produce something anyone will be bothered to read (or whatever) in 2000 years.
> There are some pretty revealing comments here. People seem to think only money has value.
To be fair, the majority has been conditioned in thinking that only money should be your purpose, that's literally how capitalism works, even arts now is a product that need to be sold to the highest bidder, or manufactured in the millions to be sold.
The frustrating thing about this program is that it is not possible to avail of this unless you are ALREADY an artist. So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.
The only person I know getting this money was already semi-retired after selling their house in London and retiring to the Irish countryside, and basically just noodles around on the guitar now and then.
Id commented on reddit a few weeks back that this type of scheme sounds great - but ends up being taken up by middle/upper classes as a bit of pocket money, and doesnt widen the pool or access to arts
The UK has this with lottery funding for athletes - it started really positive - but is now a lottery funded gap year for private school kids
We're not objectively deciding what is art and what isn't, up front. Who decides what counts? Who's to say an AI generated self-published vomit novels on Amazon aren't as valid as anything else.
I don't find your comment particularly insightful. These aren't good questions but I'll attempt to answer in good faith.
>Who decides what counts?
Clearly for this scheme the people approving the applicants and those setting the criteria for those reviewing the portfolios.
A better line of questioning might be who decided on these people and what makes them qualified to judge but you'll find yourself going down a 'Who guards the guardians' conundrum.
Your comment reminds me of when some member of the audience challenged film critic Robert Ebert on who made him the 'boss' to decide which films were good and which were bad.
He simply answered with the name of the owner of the building since he authorised the production of his film review show.
If a system is based on a userbase pulling the ladder from under them in order to make sure only they can benefit from it, then it's not a good or fair system from the get go.
Maybe the issue is with the definition of the profession of artist, that's it's too vague and fluid allowing anyone to claim to be one without much hassle.
But then if you have a strict definition of the artist profession, everyone will rush to conform to the bare minimum of that in order to score those benefits.
So maybe then the core issue is with the welfare state that unfairly picks winners and losers instead of being "universal".
Artist have exited way before the welfare state has. They were poor and had patrons who supported them if they loved their work. So then why do we need the state to subsidize this now? Do we have proof this leads to higher quality art?
Is that even possible? Someone has to pay for it. If I'm rich and I get $40,000 a year from UBI, but my direct or indirect taxes go up by $60,000 in order to fund the program, am I really receiving UBI? At some point UBI has to involve transfers between income or wealth levels. The particulars of how the program is funded determines how progressive or regressive the policy is in net.
The whole point is that paying everyone a fixed $X amount regardless of anything else is extremely easy to manage, so you can drop all the bureaucracy that builds up around welfare. But, yes, in practice it also acts as a progressive income tax of sorts even with an otherwise flat tax rate (which allows for further simplification) because delta between UBI check and taxes is going to gradually decrease as income rises and eventually becomes negative.
That said even with just personal income tax it's viable. I once crunched the numbers on what it'd take to have everyone in US receive the current federal min wage as UBI payment, assuming a flat surface tax (i.e. relying solely on that UBI check to make it progressive), and it was somewhere in the ballpark of 50%.
Of course, you can get there much easier if you go for the sacred cows such as capital gains. Raising that to the same level as regular income alone would bring a lot of tax revenue.
We could also start taxing AI, since it is (or at least positioned by those deploying it) the immediate cause why so many people are going to find themselves out of jobs.
> The frustrating thing about this program is that it is not possible to avail of this unless you are ALREADY an artist.
Frankly we don’t know the selection criteria for the program this year. It will be only released in April.
But we know the selection criteria for the pilot program, and for that this was not true.
> So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.
Again we don’t know the full program’s eligibility criteria yet. Under the pilot program there were two separate streams. Those who were recently trained, and those who were “practicing artist”.
Your hypothetical “artist who gave up art” might fall into the “recently trained” stream and thus be eligible.
Or if they gave up on art a long ago (more than 5 years), there are ways they can get back to it. They can start practicing their art on the side again, produce a portfolio of work and thus become eligible again. They don’t need to be full time artist for this.
> The only person I know getting this money
In the pilot program they randomly selected 2000 participants from those who where eligible. So to get the money in the pilot program you both needed to be eligible, have applied for it, and be lucky enough in the lottery.
Because of this lottery whoever is getting it today is not representative of who is all eligible for it.
Additionally i would argue that in every such programm there will be people that abuse the system. Just because gp knows one such person, does not mean that everybody will be doing that.
The article also mentions that overall the program had a positive impact.
There is generally a heavy bias to focusing on abuse instead of outcomes. Who cares that there are some false positives if there is a net benefit, it's just noise.
A general reason to focus on abuse instead of immediately visible outcomes: if the abuse is not dealt with properly, then that may lead to the abuse becoming increasingly widespread and blatant, which will affect future outcomes.
That is a fairly common argument, but I have yet to see any evidence to support it. In Germany, we are having a similar discussion about the Bürgergeld, i.e. unemployment benefit, which is about people abusing the Bürgergeld to the detriment of taxpayers. However, there is no actual data that show that there are a significant number of people who abuse unemployment benefits in any systematic way.
The money that the state loses through tax evasion or the exploitation of tax loopholes is much higher than the money that the state loses through unjustified claims for unemployment benefits. Nevertheless, there are constant calls to further reduce unemployment benefits or make it harder to get and the argument is always something like: There is a thing that is good and benefits people but is abused by a minority, thus we should abolish the good thing.
You can argue that nobody is systematically abusing the system but numbers go up. To those paying the taxes to support these benefits that sort of growth looks like abuse.
> You can argue that nobody is systematically abusing the system but numbers go up.
> To those paying the taxes to support these benefits that sort of growth looks like abuse.
Yes, but for 'tax payers' everything looks like abuse until they benefit from the services for which they pay taxes. The favorite hobby of people whose identity is shaped by being a taxpayer is to complain about paying taxes.
This. I've never met anyone in any setting that complained about receiving too much money.
If you ask pensioners if they should get higher pensions, they'll say YES. If you ask students if they should get more subsidies, they'll say YES. If you ask unemployed people if they should raise unemployment benefits, they'll say YES. If you ask people on minimum wage if they should raise the minimum wage, they'll say YES.
Everyone is quick to be very generous when it's from other peoples' money without accounting for the second order effects of those decisions, which is especially a big problem of the extended welfare state, since everyone pays taxes and so then everyone wants more and more subsidies so they can feel they're getting their money's worth out of the system, or else they feel cheated.
I'm pretty sure I'm on record here on HN complaining about receiving covid relief checks that I don't need, and that I would much rather that money went to people who were actually struggling.
Personally, I want people on the high end of earnings (such as myself) to be taxed more so that a basic income scheme like this can be available for anybody who wants it. Charge me an extra $300/month and give it to some random 24 year old so that he can smoke weed and play his guitar. He'll get more use out of it than I will.
One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.
“ One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.”
In Ireland their best chance of having their own place is emigration or waiting for their parents to die.
The extent of "anybody" is the detail that contains the devil.
Anybody who? Citizen? Asylum seeker? A person who obtained asylum or other forms of protection? A 'tolerated' person who was not deported? (Duldung in Germany.)
Europe is already politically ablaze, and one of the factors of this blaze is "too many foreigners from the Third World as recipients of welfare". If you introduce any basic income scheme that doesn't totally exclude non-citizens, you can expect the people smuggling gangs of Libya and Turkey to advertise it tomorrow as a next pull factor for their business.
Illegal mass unskilled migration to EU, only for them to leech off welfare and be an overall net negative to society and the state's coffers, is intentional by calculated design.
Here's how it works: You take 1000 Euros in taxes from a productive German/West-EU citizen, and then redistribute that to 5 migrants giving them 200 Euro each, so you lose one angry voter but you gain 5 happy new ones.
The government is using your tax money to buy and replace your votes, this way the mainstream politicians cemented in the status quo parties, can keep making your life miserable with no accountability or repercussions for them and their careers, because your votes now become irrelevant.
And for good measure, in case the citizens vote for the so called "extremist" parties that promise to counter this obvious scam, you just slander them as nazis/$-FOBES/Putin-supporters with no proof, and form a 'cordon sanitaire' around them to take away their democratic representation, or just ban those parties altogether from elections so you can rule undisputed while masquerading as democracy.
> One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.
Wow! You’re optimistic!
The data shows that having at least one patent on welfare is a strong predictor that a child will grow up to spend their life on welfare. Having both parents on welfare almost guarantees it.
Having single young men on welfare is one of the worst things a society can do for young men. They’d be much better off spending four years in compulsory service and learning to be useful.
The idea is to give people enough of a safety net that they don't starve to death. But really, it's kinda crap to live in a shared apartment with a bunch of broke college students, living off giant bags of potatoes. Most of us have done that, and now that we can afford not to, we don't.
I'm sure there will be plenty of people with low enough ambition that they'll just stay there, subsisting. But I don't doubt they'd be doing that in their mom's basement without basic income, so I imagine that society will survive just fine.
> Personally, I want people on the high end of earnings (such as myself) to be taxed more so that a basic income scheme like this can be available for anybody who wants it. Charge me an extra $300/month and give it to some random 24 year old so that he can smoke weed and play his guitar. He'll get more use out of it than I will.
You know you CAN donate money to the government any time you want, right? Do you do that? Practice what you preach, don't hide behind "oh if only the government made me do it."
> One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.
This is the critical problem you and others like you make: assuming that everyone is a reasonable, honest, ambitious person just like you are. Many people -- not all, but a big enough proportion to be a problem -- aren't. And when we make it possible to actually make "do drugs and play videogames all day" a viable lifestyle, there's loads of people who will take the government up on the offer. And remember, they can vote themselves UBI raises.
> You know you CAN donate money to the government any time you want, right? Do you do that? Practice what you preach, don't hide behind "oh if only the government made me do it."
You know we can also advocate for higher taxes, given that it's astronomically more meaningful for everyone to give ten cents than for me to give a few dollars, right? Or did you think this was an insightful, valuable addition to the discussion that no one has ever suggested before? Is this the comment section of a local newspaper? Good god.
> there's loads of people who will take the government up on the offer.
Prove it. How many are loads? What, specifically, do you think UBI actually amounts to?
> You know we can also advocate for higher taxes, given that it's astronomically more meaningful for everyone to give ten cents than for me to give a few dollars, right?
And you can ALSO voluntarily pay more in taxes while doing so. It's called leading by example. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get called out on this and they do the same thing; "oh I'm just one person, my extra tax money is but a drop in the ocean, so why bother." If you and everyone else saying "tax me harder" actually put up, it might amount to something! And at least it would make people respect your position a bit more.
> Prove it. How many are loads?
Well let's see, anyone who's lived their entire life on welfare (we have families of multiple generations who have done so at this point) would qualify. So would all the homeless people more content to live on the street and do drugs than go to rehab.
> What, specifically, do you think UBI actually amounts to?
Enough for people with low ambition to live on! And their vote counts just as much as the productive members of society paying for them.
Becoming a working artist requires sacrifice and commitment.
Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll podcast) often talks about the practicalities of producing art.
In 1970's a (starving) artist worked part-time job (eg waiter), enabling them to focus on their craft most of the week.
Today, typical artist has to hustle, juggling 3 jobs, and can only focus once per week on their one day off work.
Further, "entry level" jobs are unpaid / underpaid. Such as internships at a museum or newspaper. Ditto teaching positions.
Consequently, only affluent persons are able to break into the creative disciplines (production of culture). Trust funds, nepotism, and other lottery winners.
--
I, for one, enthusiastically support heavily subsidizing both creative and caring work. All those "not-for-profit" gigs and unpaid labor. They're the grease that keeps society working. Despite not being tabulated in someone's payroll accounting system.
Irish here. It's a cultural thing. Ireland is the only country in the world whose national symbol is a musical instrument.
Art is seen as a worthwhile endeavour even if it can't necessarily support itself as a private endeavour. It's for the same reason galleries and museums are subsidised by the government.
Anyone can call themselves an artist but to receive this money you would have to have a portfolio of work that is approved by the application programme.
Ireland already has a competitive economy. There is more to a country than economics and that includes promoting things like art to foster a sense of identity and promote Ireland on a world stage.
Milton Friedman wouldn't approve and we're okay with that.
We have a similar scheme in Slovenia. Don't know the details but there's the concept of a "free artist".
At a minimum you need a registered business, regular exhibitions or performances in your field, you have to register with the ministry of culture, and can't have a job. Contract work is allowed and encouraged. Also you are expected to apply when the government issues a Call For Creatives.
I think you get paid minimum wage as long as you continue fulfilling criteria.
You don't actually get paid, but you don't need to pay taxes and social security fees (around 650€ per month) that you would otherwise have to pay as a self employed person.
> Also you are expected to apply when the government issues a Call For Creatives.
I love the idea of having a list of "Registered Artists", where you get a basic income as long as you're prepared to Answer The Call of Your Country when needed.
"We need a nice cartoony figure for this public safety film! Find me some artists!"
"Here you go, boss"
"Naw, not those guys, have you got anything in a more Shel Silverstein-y kind of look? How about those ones?"
Interesting concept, seems like it is a way to pay less taxes as an artist, not really a pay but it will make it easier to live. Not sure about the selection process though..
> Self-employed in culture can be given the right to pay social security contributions from the state budget.
The link is totally irrelevant, it's about filing taxes and the right to pay to the social security fund not about the income you receive while you have the status. Yes, you get an extra tax break (taxes aren't paid on the money you receive from the state), but that's not the main point.
If there are other ways artists get support do you have a better definition one can search for? Considering it talks about supporting artists I feel it is relevant to the situation in my country. Getting help with social insurance is pretty important in many countries, and something I know many artists have problem with.
I'm an Irish artist, living in Ireland. I'm very far from a rich kid. Like most Irish artists, I make some of my living from my "artistic" work, and some from what others here might call "real work". Sometimes there's not a clear division between the two, and anyway the ratio of one to the other changes every year.
Because of the cost of living here, particularly in Dublin, there is no way that the Basic Income would provide me with anything like what most people here would consider a decent standard of living. (It would currently leave me with about €200 left over every month, after I pay just my rent. That's before any bills or groceries or anything.)
Plenty of people find a way to continue to make art that other people value, even if the cost of living continues to spiral ever upwards. This payment is simply a buffer to make making art a little easier, for a fraction of the many people who contribute to the social, cultural, and intellectual life of this country. For some it pays their rent or mortgage, for some it pays for childcare so they have time to work, for some it facilitates research or purchase of materials, for some it allows them a workspace outside their home.
It's not perfect, as no public arts funding is perfect but, to me, the kind of cheap cynicism displayed in this comment comes from a place of deep ignorance and bitterness.
Working artists, spouses, and semi-retirees are relatively common.
‘2,000 creative workers’ would make this quite competitive, even if it’s only 20k USD/year that could easily enable people to be artists who wouldn’t make a career of it on their own.
Many people who are artists can’t afford to stay artists.
Pulling a 80 hour workweeks at 24, supporting yourself while doing something else is not sustainable. Similarly someone supporting themselves as an artist + a kid is suddenly a very different situation.
Exactly. A sketchbook and pencils cost next to nothing. But being able to take that and turn it into an oil painting on a giant canvas costs real money.
Writing a few songs on a guitar from Facebook marketplace is cheap. Turning that into a live show is expensive and time consuming.
Writing some Irish language poems on your lunchbreaks is cheap. Doing public readings as an unknown poet is not.
> Writing some Irish language poems on your lunchbreaks is cheap. Doing public readings as an unknown poet is not.
How is doing public reading of poetry not cheap?
I have friends who do standup comedy and they just show up at open mic nights and it doesn’t cost them anything. One is good enough that now the venues are paying him a little bit.
Ireland's economic statistics are so badly distorted by US companies routing money there that there is an entire subfield of economics dedicated to trying to figure out what Ireland's real economic state is, called "Leprechaun economics". A common adjustment made by economics researchers when studying the EU is to just subtract Ireland entirely.
> The key to understanding this disconnect is a number few outside Ireland pay attention to: Modified Gross National Income, or GNI*. Unlike GDP, which counts all activity happening within Ireland’s borders, GNI* adjusts for the distortions caused by the huge presence of foreign multinationals. And the gap is enormous. In 2023, GNI* was just €291 billion — meaning more than €219 billion of Ireland’s reported output never truly flowed into the Irish economy at all.
When looking at Ireland's own economy without the influence of US tax transactions, the economy shrinks by nearly half.
I'm 38, I was fully aware of this when I was 15 years old in Economics class. This is simply a problem for people who go around measuring everything with GDP and demand the world adjust to that. You've run in to the limitations of GDP.
There is no single indicator of wealth, measuring wealth requires a number of measures to provide context and contrast. The Irish economy is largely comparable to the Danish economy. I'd say the Danes sneak in just ahead of us but well behind Norway and Switzerland.
Ireland for example is wealthier than either the UK or France on a per capita basis. The GDP of Alabama and Bavaria, Germany per capita is largely the same, yet you would be insane to think Alabama was in anyway wealthier than Bavaria.
I stand by my comment.
The Irish economy is competitive and your little 'gotcha' that is a common trope across various shallow sub reddits, increasingly at an alarmingly peevish rate simply doesn't persuade me or others who are interested in understanding these things at a deeper level. There is a time and place for that discussion and it really isn't this thread.
However, that assumes the modified GNI measure is accurate. If you believe these numbers the Irish became nearly 40% wealthier between 2020 and 2023. That would be a truly unprecedented spike in wealth never before seen in history, and I don't think anyone believes it. It's much more likely that their attempts to subtract the distortion of American corporate success from the Irish numbers aren't successful. Tech firms did great during the COVID period whilst the average person... not so much.
Milton Friedman wouldn’t have approved of a basic-income scheme restricted to artists. He would have argued that restricting the benefit to artists would distort incentives for choosing a profession in a way likely to reduce social welfare, and that eligibility by profession is a “welfare trap”: it’s hard to stop being an artist and start being something else when it means losing your guaranteed income.
But Friedman would have supported a broad basic-income scheme. We know this because he did support one. It was his proposal in 1962 of a “negative income tax” [0] (in Capitalism and Freedom) that gave rise to the movement to replace traditional social welfare programs with simple schemes that just give money to poor people. (This movement led to the Earned Income Tax Credit [1] in the United States.)
Friedman’s negative income tax is equivalent to the contemporary notion of a guaranteed basic income (but not to a universal basic income, as only people earning below some threshold would receive it). Like most economists, Friedman believed that people (even poor people) can typically make their own economic choices better than a government program can make those choices for them. (He was likewise not opposed to redistributive policies per se.) That was the root of his advocacy for market-based mechanisms of organizing the economy.
It's not remotely a basic income scheme. It's a state stipend for acclaimed artists. Don't know about Ireland, but Norway has had this for over 100 years (kunstnerlønn). It's basically a court poet institution, ever so slightly broadened.
To need to already have a portfolio of work kind of defeats the purpose, no? It kind of proves you didn't need this money to make art. I would have thought the point was to unlock potential artists who hadn't the time to develop their practice.
Can you name a government-subsidized Irish artist who has been successfully promoted on the world stage?
I don't give a shit about Milton Friedman. I do give a shit about wage earners in Ireland who are being forced to pay for an artist welfare program. Ireland has a competitive economy.
It's not like Ireland is getting rid of unemployment insurance. And insurance sales and carpet installation are professions where there are jobs that actually pay a living wage.
A lot of societies have realized there is value in supporting art and culture. For thousands of years that activity was sponsored by monarchs, royalty and other nobility. Up until actually quite recently, most first world countries without monarchs and nobles also provided substantial support for the arts.
> A lot of societies have realized there is value in supporting art and culture.
Basically outlandishly rich and gaudy benefactors have always had so much money they could employ OTHERS to do trivial pursuits. Now - the average taxpayer will bear that cost.
I'm sure if you asked the average tax payer they would prefer programs like these rather than corporate welfare nonsense. So yeah, seems alright to me. I'm a tax payer.
What's interesting is that you don't realize how much of that stuff from Walmart had artistic processes embedded into it along the production line.
Did those shower curtains have a design? Did your sweater have a color and style? Probably so, but you never pay attention to how the world of "fine art" refracts into your daily life.
If the products were cheap, it's likely someone unpaid is responsible for the design. See, for example, the lawsuit against Zara over theft of ideas from small-time designers [1].
In any case, cheap Chinese brands do the same thing as Zara en masse (copying designs – note the "external suppliers" bit in its defense PR), and those products then end up in Walmart/on Amazon. The artists starve but you have your shower curtains and are happy with the price.
Even when people are paid, it’s not necessarily fair nor driving the price paid - like clothing/purse manufacturing in low income countries for high income markets.
I do. My aunt is a pattern designer for ... Shower curtains at Walmart. Yup she works for a supply house in NY that designs shower curtains and her main customer is walmart
Yes and do billion dollar corporations really need that much government subsidies? Turns out yes they do, but sure enjoy your plastic trinkets from China I guess. Hopefully you thank a tax payer that pays for the welfare and medicaid of those Walmart workers, and the local town for cheaper property taxes and utility rates at Walmart.
God knows Walmart couldn't exist with all this rampant welfare.
walmart solves a major logistical problem: provide government subsidized goods to low income neighborhoods. the government should like to give walmart money, as it is plausibly a cost-effective way to provide these goods to people who need them. the administrators of walmart are well rewarded for providing this public good.
You can both be right. Walmart is a valuable corporation; there are useful idiots who choose not to see that. It’s also a profitable one, which means it doesn’t need subsidies; another set of useful idiots can’t seem to see that.
The only thing Walmart solves is destroying local ecosystems both biological and human. Acting like the executives paying themselves exorbitant salaries is a virtue is frankly odd and deeply disgusting as a human being, I'm sure the lowly workers wished they could vote themselves higher salaries too.
Maybe if workplace democracy was enforced upon Walmart it would be an entirely different entity, likely for the better too.
> Yes and do billion dollar corporations really need that much government subsidies? Turns out yes they do, but sure enjoy your plastic trinkets from China I guess. Hopefully you thank a tax payer that pays for the welfare and medicaid of those Walmart workers, and the local town for cheaper property taxes and utility rates at Walmart.
This is not the case.
Walmart doesn't have the lowest prices because they are efficient, yes conventional wisdom might dictate that but you are forgetting wholesalers exist from which conventional retailers buy from and the margin definitely tilts towards walmart but there was a time where they could easily compete against walmart and set their prices.
Now what's happening is that walmart has these special deals (in this case with pepsi) where pepsi would literally surveil all marts and see which is selling cheaper than walmart (FoodLion did that) and then what Pepsi did was cut off all the promotional money of FoodLion and increase their wholesaler prices.
Is this legal? Hell no. It's all completely illegal but the govt. stopped enforcing the law
Then when it was released by FTC, the whole document was almost redacted and Trump signed an executive order essentially trying to stop it from going out but some journalists dug/pressured for its release.
So walmart isn't the base because they are price competitive, hell-no. It's because they set the floor & have special deals with other companies to maintain that floor artificially.
Which actually leads to small retailers/chains shutting down because they can't compete on price and this essentially leads to a monopoly of walmart where it can dictate prices & increase them and the people are forced to STILL go to them.
And all of this while being immensely govt subsidized as you say too while paying their employees peanuts.
Actually Walmart when it was launched in germany was sued quite a lot for such practices that iirc they had to take an exit. No country wants a walmart because they know that they might use their american profits (which we discovered how come from shady practices themselves) and then use it to run marts at losses until the competition dies which is still immensely bad long term for the average consumer of whole world but particularly the americans in my opinion as all other govts are more protective of such industries for this good reason and walmart fails to measure up to those standards in other countries.
A lot of my points were heavily influenced by this video so I would recommend you to watch it to help understand more as well about what I am talking.
The deception of walmart actually fools a lot of people but the economical margin is actually quite low. It's the artifical floor that they set which gets unnoticed by many and this is why other retailers aren't able to compete, all of which is highly illegal but once again, the govt. stopped enforcing this law.
A) The government building an entire logistical supply and warehousing chain across the country for groceries to support food welfare. Cold food, meat, spoilage & waste, a bunch of federal jobs.
or
B) The government gives citizens a bit of money, which they then spend at existing warehouses (with existing logistical supply chains) to buy food. Some existing warehouses will accumulate larger shares of this money, as it has more customers.
The existing warehouses in example B are called grocery stores, like Walmart.
Seems like the it IS cheaper for the government to do it, odd how much better prices can be when you don't have to worry about making sure the fat cats stay fat.
if walmart unfairly used its monopolistic position to steal from consumers, then of course i support serving justice.
is the point of this conversation just to proclaim you don't like some guys? what is your claim here? what action do you desire the collective to take? what is the rule that society should follow?
why do you expect that rule to lead to a more prosperous, thriving society?
I wish more intellectuals had their "brain on capitalism".
It is dismaying to find out how many American academicians take Marxism seriously - unless they stem from countries like Cuba that had the misfortune to actually let Marxist ideas rule them. It is mental fentanyl for certain kind of collectivist mind.
It's possible to criticize one thing without endorsing another. Your comment reads like a response to someone criticizing what the current US administration is doing by saying "yeah but the Democrats..."
Binary thinking is analogous to quantizing an LLM to 2 bits (worse, actually). You're not going to get good results.
Most countries that tried experimenting with various systems settled on a combination of a relatively free market with a welfare system supported by taxation of the resulting economic surplus. Which indicates that this is what the population at large finds most acceptable.
In theory? The most obvious is labor theory of value, plus false consciousness and the division of the society into exploitative class and exploited class.
In practice? For example, nationalization of businesses and collectivization in rural areas, including suppression of "kulaks".
Walmart is an insanely profitable business that pays most of its employees well under a living wage.
Maybe we should have a structure in place that taxes companies based on how many benefits their employees claim, say five times the total amount of money claimed.
I come from Quebec, a cultural island in North America. You need to create infrastructure for your culture, so that it’s not swallowed by American culture. Funding culture protects our language, and to an extent our history and our perspective. There are books, art, movies and shows about us, in our language. It makes us a people.
I understand your perspective. However, those trades, and most work in general, differ from art. Art is vital to our society, yet the current reward system optimizes for the worst art and the worst people.
We need more art that pushes boundaries and remains controversial. Instead, we favor the type of artist who attracts the most attention through their personality, whether because of their looks or a manufactured edgy image, while producing mundane, lowest-common-denominator work. We must support contemporary artists who move us forward rather than remaining stuck in popularity contests or constant nostalgia.
Under the current system, it is almost inevitable that influencers use their status to promote gambling ads and NFTs, ruining the lives of their fans. We need to break this cycle of rewarding increasingly poor behavior while making it harder for independent artists to earn a living.
What you describe is not a real choice that is being made. The unemployed in Ireland get unemployment benefits, so this isn't favouring one over the other. The Artist's UBI is not enough to live on (neither are most countries' unemployment benefits to be fair) but in general a salesperson or carpet installer when in employment will make a decent living, whereas artists don't. Society tends to under value the arts and overvalue commerce (and any free market arguments about this consistently fail to reflect reality), and this address some of the balance. They did an analysis (probably generously) and found that there would actually be an ROI for this UBI.
I suspect it's a mix of trying to keep the arts (including music) alive, especially with all the big streaming services taking what would have been some of their profits in the past and - the likes of sales people don't directly do good for society (or at least, not all/most of them) - the world has more than enough sales people trying to get people to spend money, where as there's good research to show the value of investing in the arts.
Anyone can become an artist with no skill and minimal effort while being a carpet installer requires skill and effort. If you are a carpet installer just call it art and get the money
Steal from the rest of society? Would you cop yourself on. Governments levy taxes and use that tax money to fund things that they think will benefit society. A la carte funding of the bits you think are worth funding is not a workable proposal. The Irish government funds lots of things I don't agree with but characterising that as theft is ludicrous.
I mean 20-50% on top of income tax. Putting your money where your mouth is. That percentage should not be too much for anyone truly passionate and willing to make some sacrifices.
I can't afford a painting. Noone in my neighbour can afford one. Together, we might, and we could put it on a wall in a communal building. Let's call it a museum.
It seems there are 2000 positions and 8000 applicants. The program cost $74M, but more than paid for itself:
> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.
None of these 2000 artists will create anything close to a single piece of art having any sort of effect on society. I can guarantee it.
I worked in "culture" for a while when I was younger. 90% of it is just disguised unemployment benefits for those that consider it a dirty word barely good enough for the hoi polloi.
Because any modern unemployment insurance program (which Ireland has) will be a percentage based on salary. Struggling artist aren't exactly making regular money like a formerly employed salesperson or carpet installer would be.
Note that many carpet installers and other handyman also do work (partially) under the table so their salary isn't representative of their regular income either. This also fluctuates a lot based on season. It's the cost of being (partially) self employed.
Why should the government be asked to cover income that wasn't reported / taxed by an individual? There's a clear process to report income that's non W2 (or equivalent)
Mentioning it since it's mostly the same with small artists. You'll always only report the bare minimum which results in the unemployment $ being rough issue.
I'm not in Ireland but it's the same everywhere. No one likes paying taxes.
Not saying that anything should be done about it. TBH I'd even like to have unemployment benefits be an optional insurance to reduce my taxes since I haven't gotten a cent out of it yet, but that's separate.
Just noting that artists aren't in some unique situation.
Nothing is stopping them from opening a company and giving themselves a fixed salary or doing some mix of salaried, freelance and under-table work.
A novel treatment for the proverbial dying man. I understand that this program is currently assigned at random but it’s prudent to assume that they’ll shift to a “merit based” system before long i.e. sweetheart deals for members of the right clique, nepotism, and the occasional worthwhile project. For concrete examples, look no further than the content funded and produced by the national broadcaster, RTE. Aside from a few decent documentary shows, the dramas and comedies produced are extremely low quality, often with the same familiar faces who are well established in the clique. The occasional exception proves the rule.
> it’s prudent to assume that they’ll shift to a “merit based”
There is already a "Merit based" system that supports the arts. It's called the private market.
My initial gut reaction was akin to many responses here but a post that detailed the implementation mitigates many concerns I'd have if I were an Irish citizen. As long as the system has some required 'buy-in' from applicants to prove they are working towards being an artist, and the distribution is random so it's not a guaranteed payout, and possibly the odds of being selected are driven by the number of applicants and so no one could do a cost-benefit analysis of submitting the 'buy-in' purely with hope of receiving a payout, then this seems to be a more fair way of supporting up and coming 'arts' than the government paying some already established artist for a mural or to design a park or to create a sculpture.
Alternatively, it's successful and is expanded to support more artists in the future. Cynicism with governance not unjustified in Ireland, but here we are looking at some actual progress.
While some things are doing great, there's a not insignificant amount of inertia in government for the last decade. This is actively being discussed in the Irish press. And Ireland has a long history of cronyism. I suspected (author clarified below) that is what was leading to the cynicism in the original post.
Artists picked at random will still be subject to existing conditions, those best able to maneuver within the social and political currents will inevitably outperform those who cannot.
Those running the program are ill-equipped to define it’s success, being part of the same regime which routinely delivers bottom-of-the-barrel slop.
Ireland has already provided substantial benefits to artists — income from art is exempt from income tax up to a certain level. Society has not disintegrated. Speculation and anecdotes are not terribly useful but my Irish author friend is not from a rich family, nor is she well-off, but she’s able to support her husband and child in a smaller Irish city by dint of writing several books a year and stressing a lot. I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.
> I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.
Maybe it shouldn't be possible. Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.
Indeed! e:g - looking after elderly and/or disabled people, to give their family carers respite. Which is a minimum wage job seen by many as "drain on the taxpayer", ignoring that apart from being worth providing for its own sake, it can enable the family carers to be also economic contributors and pay tax themselves.
I think we as a society strive to make gp correct that money is representative of value, and rightfully so.
Anyone partaking in any activity that has value to others should be given money. That is literally what this basic income/tax break for artists is for. Someone thought producing art had value and pure capitalism wasn't correctly matching that value with monetary rewards.
There are lots of rich churches and church leaders out there. That's because they serve a human need, and those humans are willing to direct some of their finite resources towards that provider. (I'm talking about the collections plate if you didn't catch that.)
Now obviously money on its own is not value. It should represent value that you delivered to someone else in the past, and is helpful for getting whatever value your life needs. You mentioned philosophy --- that yoga retreat in the Andes isn't free, is it?
Now sometimes we muddy the waters, for example we permit lotteries where the winner takes home a good deal of money without providing any value to anyone. That debases money, and I think it has no part in society, but I'm unfortunately swimming against the tide on that one.
Of course they do. I'm not saying it's the only way to measure value as individuals. But as a society, lots of things do boil down to money, as that's the medium of exchange. Society was the context of this thread, not individual.
Not quite. Money is how we describe instrumental value, and occasionally allocation priority. Personal attachment and moral worth are also terms often used interchangeably with "value," though in my opinion that should stop and we should all simply never use the word "value" again because so many meanings have collapsed into it.
What I would suggest you do is, find a loving partner to start a family with, then do everything you can for 20 years to focus primarily on earning, or otherwise acquiring, money.
Then get divorced and discover your children don’t know who you are, and neither do you. And your wife took the dog too.
It’s an almost guaranteed way to eradicate this wildly stupid idea you have.
A lot of those relevant writings became relevant because of the horrible experiences the author went through forged them into an interesting writer. If we're assuming that we only know retrospectively whether the writing is important then the best course of action would be for people to write as a hobby and make choices that are likely (rather than unlikely) to lead to a comfortable life. Particularly in this current era where we might suspect that writing and publishing a book is getting much easier thanks to technology.
Are you arguing that most good writers from history were poor? This is after all the only "horrible experience" a subsidy would alleviate. I don't think that's actually supported by evidence, most great writers I can think of were relatively extremely sheltered (although they often were sensitive to the horrible experiences of others)
I think the argument is a) most writers have to do a lot of writing to achieve writing consumable/appreciated but sufficient to be considered successful, b) most great writers had to go through some shit in life to incorporate that in their writing to make it interesting in order to be successful.
> A lot of those relevant writings became relevant because of the horrible experiences the author went through forged them into an interesting writer.
Sometimes artists suffer, but it's mostly a legend at this point. Plenty of great artists have perfectly fine lives. Look at like, any modern fantasy or sci fi author.
You’re missing, somewhat gleefully, most of the history of western art, which you could imagine as split between patronage-based art (have you heard of the Sistine Chapel, for instance?) and vernacular art - where things like genre storytelling and family portraits come from.
Broadly speaking, vernacular artists work for a fucking living; it’s rare there (like in most pursuits) to get super rich. We can’t all be David Baldacci or Danielle Steele.
NB: Thanks to Neal Stephenson for the best essay on this. He calls genre artists “Beowulf” artists.
Am noob. The phrase "folk art" never satisfied me. Is it really all that different? But I didn't have the gumption to learn more. Happily, the critics and philosophers did:
I don't think that being able to support a family of three in Ireland is particularly a sign that society doesn't value your work. If she had to pay income tax, perhaps she'd only be able to support herself -- but if you think everyone in Ireland who only makes enough money to support themselves is doing not particularly valuable work, I think it's worth considering the implications of that.
I have thoughts on how we're defining value as well, but others have covered those.
Ireland has not disintegrated, but it's society is under incredible pressure and is fewer missed meals away from a cultural revolution sized event than most places.
Obviously not because of this income scheme and not complete disintegration, but Irish society is under extreme strain from housing pressures, rising living costs, and growing polarisation that is tearing at social cohesion.
It's frustrating to see funds allocated to this scheme when health, housing, transport, etc are all failing apart.
All true, but let's not lose track of relative costs.
The income program provides €33,800,000 a year (2000 participants, €325 a week, 52 weeks in a year). Double that to account for cost of managing the program -- that seems too high to me, but I want to err on the side of caution for this analysis.
Some percentage of that money flows right back into the economy, of course.
Meanwhile, ignoring windfall corporate taxes, Ireland ran a €7.4 billion deficit in 2025. So the cost of the program, ignoring the money flowing back into the economy, is under half a percentage point of the budget? Those small amounts do add up, but I can't see this as relevant competition to the cost of shoring up health, housing, and transport. I don't have good estimates of how much those costs are, which is why I'm using the deficit as a relevant proxy, but still -- we ought to avoid the trap of seeing numbers which are large to you and me and forgetting that other numbers are larger by orders of magnitude. (There's a term for this which slips my mind.)
Meanwhile, what's going to be the social effect of working stiffs living paycheck to paycheck seeing the government giving preference yet again to someone other than them?
The allocation this year is €18m and it goes live in Q4. On a steady-state basis we are likely in the €60–70m range annually. That's not a rounding error.
This is an eight-figure recurring commitment. It represents the total lifetime income tax contribution of well over 100 ordinary Irish workers per year. That's not an abstract, it's decades of PAYE from real people.
Public finance is about marginal allocation. Many high-impact projects sit in or below this band:
* St Christopher’s Hospice rebuild in Cavan – €13.5 MM
* Cork Educate Together Secondary School in Douglas – €45 MM
* NAS Ambulance Centre in New Ross – €0.5 MM
* CAMHS national annual opex budget – €180 MM
So these aren't symbolic sums. They're the difference between capacity and waiting lists.
“Money flows back into the economy” applies equally to nurses, SNAs, paramedics, construction workers, carers, etc. Recirculation is a property of all domestic public spending. It is not a defence of any specific programme.
Comparing this to the national deficit is also wrong. Almost every discrete programme looks small beside a multi-billion euro figure (whether it's the structural deficit or the €29 BN DSP budget). That does not mean it should escape scrutiny. Budget decisions are made at the margin. €60 MM for artist basic income competes with all these other €5-100m line items, not with the entire deficit.
Exponent blindness is real, but it is not relevant here. The question is:
Is this the highest-value use of €60-70 MM per year in a system with delayed scoliosis surgeries, SNA shortages, and overstretched mental health services?
Thanks for the more detailed analysis — you clearly have better visibility into specifics than I do as an outsider. I sincerely appreciate the follow up and I agree that the economics should be examined.
I still think there’s value to encouraging the arts that isn’t purely financial, but I don’t think there’s an easy way to answer yes to your last question.
That 33 million could have built, let’s say, 66 houses and housed, let’s say, 264 people (66 families of four) for a generation before needing much in the way of maintenance.
But no, fuck the working poor, let’s fund artists.
Sorry, but what exactly makes you say that artists aren't working poor?
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds a bit like you've got a pre-existing opinion of the value of artists vs. however you're defining working poor.
> But no, fuck the working poor, let’s fund artists.
What if they built those 66 houses? Is the complaint then, "what about the other working poor, why didn't they get houses"? Is there ever a point where it's like, ok to help some people given that some is more than none? Or is this all zero sum bullshit where if we can't help everyone we should help no one and just give Google back it's tax dollars?
> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.
I'd love to see the breakdown on this, because in my experience with Government comms, if it was a straightforward economic win like an FDI or industrial announcement, they'd headline the figure. Unquantified phrases like "reduced reliance on other social welfare payments" are usually spin at best.
I understand your point, but in response to GP (they should spend this money on houses for other poor people instead), the reduced reliance on other social welfare is totally legitimate to count.
I agree, but another commenter linked the cost-benefit analysis and it really is creative accounting to get to a positive net social return.
The net fiscal cost after accounting for increase tax revenue and social protection savings was €72 MM.
This was then offset to get to a positive net social gain by €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", as measured by a single survey question called the WELLBY test:
> “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?
The €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", which is the sole decider of whether this pilot was a net positive or a huge net negative to society, is because on average, the 2,000 pilot scheme participants had a very approximate 0.7–1.1 increase in score when asked the above question during the pilot as compared to before the pilot. Each 1 point was deemed to be worth €15,340.
Classic false dilemma. You're trying to frame my comment as “we can only ever fix one problem” when it is, in fact, “we have constrained resources and urgent systemic failures and so prioritisation is important”.
For example, Budget 2026 did not address the €307 million structural shortfall in university funding. Is basic income for artists a better allocation than third-level education? Or capital expenditure on cancer care? Or NAS opex?
I specifically disagree with this allocation of funds as we live in country filled with specific solvable structural and life-limiting problems that should be solved before artist wellbeing.
Ultimately that comes out of their pockets. Every tax benefit my neighbor gets simply shifts the tax burden more to me. Unless I am someone who doesn't pay taxes I guess. Do you pay taxes?
I pay alot of taxes. Probably more annually in the last decade than I made in total my first decade working.
Many of my peers spend alot of time agonizing about this stuff and spending both mental energy and significant capital in avoidance. I get a higher ROI focusing on more valuable activities. Besides, art is an economic engine. If you studied it, I’d guess those tax credits in Ireland generate multiples in domestic economic activity.
Agreed it is a waste to spend too much time worrying.
It seems dubious to claim that the tax break is a net positive for the country's economy. If art were so economically viable I suspect it would pay for itself and not need government incentives. I have no problem with the government paying a muralist to beautify some public space, but this is not that. This is subsidizing art that already has some economic value to someone, just not very much.
I feel like what is actually happening is subsidizing the buying of art, as the artist themselves can afford to charge a lower price due to the tax break. So you are encouraging the population to buy more art. And I guess that has some hypothetical returns in terms of life satisfaction and civility...? I think if they framed it this way, as a tax benefit available to anyone instead of exclusively to a select few, it might be more well received. I think of the mortgage interest tax break in the USA (which is actually almost completely negated at this point by the growing standard deduction) in the same way. It encourages people to settle down, maintain a job, and buy into society, so it helps build social stability and reduces violence.
Artist speaking. A similar scheme was employed by Holland for many years. The state committed to buy at least one artwork from each artist per year and predictably their warehouses became filled with crap art that no one wanted.
That being said, wise governments recognize the value of some kind of support of the arts. One reason for the incredible esteem that Korean culture is held in within Asia is the Korean government's active support of its filmmaking, TV and music industry. This was also true in Renaissance Italy (courtesy of the Medici family) and in 17th Century France (courtesy of Louis XIV). It was even true of the CIA's active support of abstract expressionism. The payoff of such support is soft power, which is a very real force.
Even in the US we see cities becoming desirable place to live when they successfully cultivate a film scene, or an art school, and being dead when they don't. But this feels like a better approach than a basic income (which is an invitation to idleness)--make it easy to use the environs for film, streamline permitting, provide cheap capital, solicit locals for public installations.
Through the kunstuitleen they leased and sold art to galleries and private homes. It was like a library for contemporary art which paid struggling artists and their families, while also exposing the public to more art.
To say that "no one wanted" is a massively overblown. Thousands of art pieces lived happily in many Dutch homes.
OK, maybe my use of that phrase was a bit ill-judged. However, aside from supporting artists, what did the initiative achieve? Keeping artists off the dole should not be, IMHO, a goal in itself. The reputation of Dutch culture at the time was not brilliant, though neither was it bad. A strategic attitude would have been more effective... maybe target one or two artists and promote them.
The Young British Artists (YBA) boom of the 80s was a product of the innovative teaching environment of Goldsmiths' college plus the drive of people like Damien Hirst, who organized the ground-breaking Freeze exhibition. The British Council did their best to capitalize on this.
but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health... what have the Romans ever done for us?
They had something like this in the Netherlands during the 80s. Basically everyone was out of a job back then so it didn't really matter. Worst recession since 1929.
Artists had to make a buch of art which was then given to the government. The state ended up with entire warehouses filled with crap.
The work also included infrastructure projects, and often would create public art to decorate the infrastructure. That is why you'll see far more decorative work when looking at bridges from that era, for example.
I remember learning about this in high school, but grew up in a part of a large city that only really developed after the 1940's, I didn't think much of it. However, the name was catchy so I had it stashed in my memory somewhere.
As I've gone on to live in a few older cities, I have been surprised the number of times that I have (for example) come across a bridge or tunnel or whatnot and seen a big serif "WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION 1936" plaque on one side of it. It always feels like stepping into an alternate reality where history is more present and real.
It feels like a silly way to phrase it, but growing up where only a handful of buildings were older than 40 years, encountering history in a more banal form, like a simple bridge with some engravings, always feels more impactful than seeing some 500-year-old castle, monument or other touristy site.
There's a lot of weird and wonderful stuff from that era which came out of the WPA, like the American Guide series. I think we understand that period of time in the US on a deeper level thanks to it.
they hired artists and builders, they had a nice run of building domestic concentration camps that would make Nancy Pelosi scream ice faster than you could blink
Enterprise Ireland is the largest VC firm in the world by amount paid and number of clients.
Due to EU rules on state aid though, it's technically a quango and not part of the government despite being spun off of the then privatised national sugar company.
They also pay Ireland's contributions toward ESA, so the Irish flags you see printed on the side of Ariane rockets aren't a direct result of what the government is doing.
And what does any of that have to do with Marx? The USSR didn't follow Marxist principles, USSR workers didn't have any voice in how businesses operate nor were they given dividends from business profits. In 95% of potential Marxist states democracy is a base requirement and the USSR didn't even manage that.
You see, Westerners are simply on a higher level of intelligence than the Slavs and Asians. That's why they will make communism works where everybody else has failed.
Sweden introduced a similar scheme in 1964, in which artists (broadly defined, having since come to include one clown and one chess player) have been given a basic income, supplementing their other incomes up to a specific level.
Artists couldn't apply for this, but were officially selected. The program was stopped in 2010, meaning no new recipients have been selected since. As far as I know, there's been no studies surrounding any measurable increase in artistic quality or artistic output.
It is of course easy to point out how deeply unfair such programs are on multiple levels. Unsurprisingly, many recipients have utilized loopholes in order to receive the grant despite having incomes and wealth well above the threshold.
Edit to clarify: Sweden still grants long-term stipends to various artists, sometimes up to a decade. What's described above is a guaranteed, life-long, basic income.
I'd bet what happens is that it just funded a bunch of children of upper middle class families.
Scholarships and this kind of funds happen elsewhere and are based on merits. They end up funding a bunch of upper middle class's children because it turns out those children are well-equipped to perform higher on merits.
If you are too rich, then you wouldn't need this kind of fund.
If you are below upper middle class, then you would have a hard time competing with children from that class.
The upper middle class isn't rich enough to fund the kid but is good enough to accumulate a lot of merits.
You're sort of right. This particular grant is extra curious because it's typically been given to already highly accomplished artists. Sweden is a small pond and although there are a few fun outliers in this crowd, most of them make out the upper echelons of the Swedish cultural societé. Some were born straight into it. Others, no doubt, had parents who could put them there and knew someone who knew someone. One, for example, is Swedish nobility and the son of a diplomat. Another was the son of a Swedish secretary of state.
While I'm sure there are some wholly self-made virtuosos on the list, it does give off an air of apparent nepotism.
We can easily look at countries like Vietnam and Thailand where the merit is basically exam-based. Extremely difficult to cheat or "give the appearance".
The upper middle class's children perform very well. The top universities are full of these children. They are the top of the country. They are math/computer/science olympiads
If you are too rich, then the children are too spoiled. If you are too poor, then you don't have time and space to study nor access to private tutors.
Sweden punches far above its weight in game development (allegedly up to 20% of Steam revenue all goes to Swedish teams [1]), so if any people on any Swedish game developers have ever benefited from that program, I'd say the whole country has. That's surely been a huge benefit in terms of tax revenue, plus the gaming industry brings a lot of great minds to Sweden as well as improving their cultural soft power.
This is admittedly a tangent, but I love that British (and apparently Irish) government programs are commonly called "schemes". To American ears, it always sounds like some grand confidence trick is being pulled.
As an Irish person, in normal speech the word "scheme" has exactly the same shady connotations as it does for Americans. Calling someone a "schemer" is a common insult. I've always assumed the government started using the word in a rare moment of honesty and it stuck.
In India too, discounts and promotional policies are commonly called 'schemes.' I learned the hard way that in the US, the word has a negative connotation when I asked my rental office about any 'schemes,' they looked at me with total shock.
Various variants of english diverted quite a bit since the US became its own country. Like how the US constitution mentions "freedom of speech", which includes many things that aren't just speech as we'd call it, whereas many other countries call the same concept "freedom of expression" because they committed it to writing later.
Another funny difference is the word "corporation" meaning the government in some cases. Like someone living in Belfast could go home from their corporation job to their corporation flat, if they lived in public housing and were employed by Stormont.
People have seemed critical of the presentation, scope, and goal of this program. (e.g. It's not "universal" basic income, the number of recipients is limited to 2,000, and why are artists being subsidized instead of essential workers?)
Now it seems that we'll get some real world answer to those questions/concerns.
> and why are artists being subsidized instead of essential workers?
There are far more than 2,000 real, paying jobs for schoolteachers. And for grocery clerks. And for nurses. And for fire fighters. And for drivers of rubbish lorries. And for ...
Not so much for the folks who hope to be the next James Joyce or Louis le Brocquy.
With the modest size of the monthly checks, most of them may need to do that anyway.
But the obvious point is to help "artists" in Ireland. It's pretty normal for small nations to want to cultivate / protect / subsidize their arts / culture / language / whatever. The Irish gov't isn't trumpeting this program because they think it'll annoy Irish voters.
But I think people who benefit from this won’t be artists. But people who are good at making money off artsy projects.
I’d see much more value in investing in supply and demand. First, provide free studios with arts supplies, music instruments and so on. Next, force government agencies to hire local artists. Make municipalities have live music for local events and hire local musicians. Make gov agencies buy local art for decorations etc.
325 Euros/week sounds like basic rent & food & transportation. Not artsy projects with enough spare Euros for someone to skim serious money off from.
Providing "free" studios, supplies, instruments, etc. sounds like a scheme to give politicians more photo ops and bureaucrats more jobs. Why can't the artists just source exactly what they think they need from existing supply chains?
> 325 Euros/week sounds like basic rent & food & transportation. Not artsy projects with enough spare Euros for someone to skim serious money off from.
Exactly. But it's a nice addition for „project-conscious“ crowd who can add one more income stream.
> Providing "free" studios, supplies, instruments, etc. sounds like a scheme to give politicians more photo ops and bureaucrats more jobs
Some libraries here started providing free studios with some basic instruments. I hear it was a hit with long wait times. It's awesome for artsy people who want to get together and jam with friends on saturday morning. Artsy people neighbours also love it that they don't have to hear said jams too :)
It's also great for kids who want to give it a shot. It's easier to come in and find some instruments than try to get some used stuff just to play.
I'm all for enabling people to do artsy stuff en-masse. The more people give it a shot, the better. Results don't matter, playing and creating something (no matter how crappy) is important.
IMO „mass-playing-with-art“ has much better ROI than handouts to let a selected crop of people pretend they're living off their art.
Yes, supporting en-masse stuff is important. Artsy or not - playgrounds, parks, football pitches, and other things count. Or spaces for civic choral groups and painting clubs, repairing old church organs, ...
For the arts, free studios & such are both en-masse support, and a wider part of the talent funnel (vs. basic incomes).
Biggest problem that I see with basic incomes is in selecting who gets those. The article notes they'll pick randomly from 8,000 applicants - but there's judgement and selection somewhere. Otherwise, the scheme would implode politically after giving money to folks whose "art" was offensive graffiti, or appreciating expensive whiskey, or whatever.
That is a problem too. Offensive art is art too. I'd even argue that offensive art in many cases is better than non-offensive one. But yes, I guess at best „politically correct offensive“ artists will get approved.
It brings another problem that this may become sort of hush money government-at-the-time friendly artists.
Here it's already a problem for culture-ministry-financed projects. When some artists get funding, others don't... And then some people cry foul that it's because they crossed ways with some politician. Wether that's true or not, when arts funding and politics go together, it's a recipe for some sour FB posts.
Yes, and Ireland is not famed for its "all one big happy family" politics. That might be one of their reasons for drawing 2,000 winners at random from 8,000 applicants.
But in a democracy, gov't-selected art has a failure mode more fundamental than mere political bias - the voters may decide they're paying too much for really crappy "art". That's what killed the public art program in the city I live in. In hindsight, the city's Art Committee was dominated by cutting-edge academics, big-ego art snobs, and well-intended persuadables.
Though the fountain they built in front of City Hall - abstract, drearily convoluted, generally ugly, horribly expensive, and usually broken - could be seen as appropriate and spot-on symbolic political art.
artists dont do "normal" and generaly experience reality from a particular, and personal point of view, and grocerie store managers and young artists will almost certainly have mutualy antagonistic points of view. artists thrive in random spontainious environments, but forget about food, so we give them money, that they give to normal grocery store clerks, and we all forgo the seething frustration that would result from your suggestion.
What I see among artist friends, they have no problems holding a job. But their art is not exactly „bill-paying“. It's not bad, it's just not commercializable mainstream. At best it covers their expenses for studios, equipment and so on.
For that crowd, money for 3 years is not really interesting. It would ruin their existing (smaller or bigger) non-artsy careers. But their art, without significant mainstream changes, has no chance to cover a living. Even after focusing on it for 3 years.
I don't see a point to give such crowd a free ride either. They're fully capable society members. I don't see a difference between such artist getting a free ride vs me getting free money to ride my bicycle because I'd maybe do some cool shit if I had more time. Or maybe I should get a handout to do some opensource? Code is also art anyway.
"If you need subsidies in order to live off art, you don't live off art but live off the state".
As part time artist I see many problems with these schemes:
- Decoupled from people's actual appreciation of the art being done: I feel better when I know people voluntarily gave up their hard-earned money for what I do.
- Monopoly-style "winner takes all". The people who benefit from this are the ones already in a position to ask for the benefit.
- No one bites the hand that feeds then. That will form a body of "artists" subservient to the state.
The human problem is that no artist is willing to acknowledge that the public is not willing to spend money on their product.
Must feel pretty good when rich people get into a bidding war over your product!
I have a hobby and I don't get compensated for it (quite the opposite). It's not making art, but if art were my calling I could quite easily see myself making it without any hope of monetary reward. There are plenty of people who have the same hobby as me and don't have a job -- they pursue it as is it's a job, though most are not paid either. I view that as some combination of privilege and laziness.
If there's any problem here it's that people don't have enough time to pursue hobbies. I only have enough time because I work from home (no time wasted commuting). Perhaps the government should focus on where we as a society waste people's time and energy such that they have none left over for hobbies.
Thats whats happened in Norway, and even worse they gave the artists the decision making process of handing out grants leading to them self dealing or dealing to their friends.
Since only people with a wealthy family safety net have the wherewithal to call themselves artists, these schemes just end up as a transfer from poor to rich (kids)
iirc from previous criticism I saw on this a majority of the trial recipients were retirement age adults, but all the same people much wealthier with the privilege to have time/money to spend doing art. Younger artists? Not established enough.
Ok, let me guess, without looking at the article .... is it a "pilot" that's rolled out to a small number of people, for a limited period of time, and its success is judged by surveying those people on whether they were happy to get free money? I bet it was.
> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through [...] and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments,
Which sounds quite a bit like "we spent more on one type of welfare so we ended up spending less on a different type of welfare." Which, okay, good, but I don't think you can say you "recouped" anything.
If you want to criticize my post, it would be best to actually provide the data you're being snarky about. You didn't need any money to start that did you? Why suddenly do you need it now? What a crappy and bad faith attitude.
> it would be best to actually provide the data you're being snarky about.
You mean the study you're complaining about without having read? ... The one that's not even a Google search away, because it's literally linked on the page you're already on?
Not being snarky, just really surprised at the expectation of being spoonfed data that's already right in front of you, and the apparent willingness to complain about things that you haven't even glanced at.
Many people worked hard to do this study. I believe if you want to complain about their methodology then you should probably take the time to actually look at what it was first. Is that snark? Is it snark to ask for payment when people ask you to do research (however basic) for them?
> Ireland rolled out a permanent basic income scheme for the arts on Tuesday, pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week following a trial that participants said eased financial strain and allowed them to spend more time on projects.
> The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle. O'Donovan said he would like to increase the number of recipients over time.
> Over 8,000 applicants applied for the 2,000 places in the pilot scheme.
> A report on the trial found it lowered the likelihood of artists experiencing enforced deprivation, and reduced their levels of anxiety and reliance on supplementary income.
In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts has issued more than 128,000 grants, totaling more than $5 billion, to fund the projects of American artists. These subsidies have not lacked controversy, and were eventually challenged at the Supreme Court level, during the Clinton administration.
Sorry unless i’m missing a /s here but in what world is that song deserving of our taxpayer money? What does it add to “culture”, personally i don’t even find it listenable. That’s more important than spending th money available on hunger and schools is it?
There was an interesting part of an episode of The West Wing where some politicians were trying to cut this budget to make room for something else (maybe National Parks?). It was neat to see the arguments on both sides, both for an against this. In general, it seems like it gets some poor uses, but also some culturally valuable ones.
Unfortunately I don't remember the references off hand.
I do think there's value in a society encouraging the arts. I don't know what that best implementation is (if at all), though.
Good, thoughtful post. Excellent point re states taking over from the Church as patrons of the arts. Ironically Catholic commentators and conservatives in general are very critical of arts grants. It's most disingenous of the conservatives who support the business community to point out that these artists are "living off the taxpayers" when almost the entire business community is propped up by social welfare subsidies for their part-time staff.
Neither nation promises universal income: 8,000 Irish artists applied, and 2,000 were accepted.
Likewise, with the NEA, since they offer grants, you'd need to qualify, apply, and justify your work, and probably renew on an annual basis.
Ireland selected the applicants randomly. I would suppose the 8,000 needed to meet qualifications first.
Ireland promises €325/week. The NEA grants seem to be on a project basis.
So neither of these programs are anything like UBI. UBI is the buzzword that sets us all atwitter with eager hopefulness and aspirations.
Artist grant programs are more like "publish or perish" research scholars. Most grant recipients view the application process as daunting and stressful, especially when it's not in their wheelhouse. "Grant writer" is a job title and a profession unto itself these days. Even charities and welfare organizations depend on grants themselves, so their recipients may be cut off if the grants don't come in on time and fill their budgets.
Ireland's program is like being on the dole. "Here's enough to subsist on while you do your art and try to establish yourself." After 3 years, they're cut off for 3 years, so the incentive exists to become self-sufficient in that time.
Subsidizing the arts has been the realm of religion, including Christianity, for thousands of years. Michelangelo and Bernini were among thousands and thousands of artists who were funded by the Church to create music, sculpture, architecture, images, and any other sacred object in their service. If socialism or communism are the first thing to spring to your mind, please rethink and consider that these philosophies sought to supplant the original collectives: religions; and the religious leaders and patrons were distributing wealth to every possible artisan and artist and composer and performer, in the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. Nobody knows the pain of shrinking churches like Ireland does, and so it really is incumbent on their secular government to pick up the tab here, lest the hands of artists become idle and restless.
>"...go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something."
If they think this is good/important then fine but what they've created is a grant programme, not a UBI.
Personally I would have thought this money would have been better spent getting people on the margins the stability to retrain into in-demand skilled careers (e.g. single, unskilled parents training as electricians or plumbers). That feels like it would be a more durable, multi-generational benefit.
Who said it is a UBI that this "rebuttal" even makes sense to appear here? The Irish government isn't calling it a UBI. The article doesn't call it a UBI. Even the FAQ for the program says it is not UBI:
>> Why this is not a Universal Basic Income
>> It is important to note that that the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot is not a Universal Basic Income. This is a sectoral intervention to support practicing artists and creative arts workers to focus on their creative practice. This policy is separate to the Universal Basic income as outlined in the Programme for Government.
Basic Income and UBI are colloquially synonyms, people use them interchangeably, and the Irish government are almost certainly using it to endear themselves to supporters of UBI and to get more coverage for their policy than media would give them if they just called it a grant.
This happens all the time. For example, in the UK there was a push for a "living wage" in the 2010s, which the government responded to by rebranding the minimum wage the "National Living Wage" and bumping it a little for over-25s.
Society needs art. Artists produce art. There a pantheon of greats that had no commercial success in their lives but moved our culture, we’d be so much more culturally impoverished if we’d insisted they become shit plumbers.
It is not a grant. It is UBI. People who advocated for UBI always said they will spend time creating art, etc. if they didn’t have to work for income. So here it is, the dream come true.
Ireland currently has a population of approximately 5,501,000 people. There is great news: Bono and the rest of his band have agreed to provide subsidies for the 5,499,000 citizens who aren't receiving the BIA funds, and they'll brand this supplemental program as U2BI.
The website will be established shortly as https://ww2.u2bi.ie:212/ as soon as the registrars can correct the typos.
this kind of reasoning will accumulate so much inefficiencies that it will eventually blow up. Or, in the best case scenario, create a proportional inflation that makes this subsidies useless.
Think about the big picture: your salary is a cost for someone else. In the case of "basic income" is a cost for the tax payers. Who decides what benefits the tax payers? The state can't possibly do it, if not for a limited extent. Today we don't have a method more efficient than free market and free prices. Planned economies have historically failed. It may work for now, we all love arts; but tomorrow it will be the artisans (were is the boundary between art and crafts?), then maybe small businesses?
Each of this "tax exemptions" or subsidies eats the profits of someone else. Very rarely it's the richest luxuries that are taken away. Usually it's the middle-low class that doesn't receive exemptions and subsidies who's penalized. Ironically, that same class that most could consume art, crafts, and products in general. This way society spirals toward an halt.
Countries benefit massively from art. First-grade art attracts wealthy people who pay local taxes and wealthy tourists who contribute to the economic cycle of the country. For some European countries, the numbers are mind-blowing.
What you're describing then would only be a short term chicken and egg problem.
If, once established, a thriving art scene generates value by attracting tourism, wealthy individuals who want to patronize the arts, etc then the artists would be able to charge enough to fund themselves and potentially do very well for themselves.
In that scenario we'd only need to fully subsidize artists for a short period of time, the subsidy law should have an expiry date.
> we'd only need to fully subsidize artists for a short period of time
That's literally how it works (at least in France). The government sponsors artists early on. Those who make it big don't need the gov sponsoring (and lose eligibility to it). Those who don't continue to receive the sponsoring.
Some artists take a very long time to pan out (some way after their death) so it makes little sense to cut funding to artists on an expiry date basis.
Art is not a free market. The art market is heavily manipulated by investors in art.
The subsidies and tax exemptions artists receive are small so if you are arguing for less state subsidy or its the least of the problems you should look at.
I am not convinced that this particular scheme is a good idea, but the alternative is not a free market.
> then maybe small businesses?
Big business already receives both explicit exemptions and defacto ones. Ireland is part of the mechanism that lets they structure their businesses in ways that avoid tax that are not available to small businesses.
A spiral we are 1000 years into? This little distortion seems to matter to you in a way that the much larger distortions created by governments don't. I don't understand.
People love to carve out little niches where certain special people can succeed more easily, or the pyramid of people in competition for the prize/money is smaller, so they have a better chance of getting something out of it. The trick is not to be working class and you have a good shot at someone somewhere being someone who has some influence to give you an easier ride.
Very much false - the US war and post-war economy was very heavily planned, and was perhaps the most successful economy in history (precisely until it was gutted in the 70s/80s).
> best case scenario, create a proportional inflation
You give no reason to expect that this inflation will at best be proportional. It is perfectly possible (in fact likely) that the inflation will be less than proportional, because the price-setters (companies) are being taxed to give money to people on low incomes, who are economically speaking mostly consumers.
> Each of this "tax exemptions" or subsidies eats the profits of someone else. Very rarely it's the richest luxuries that are taken away.
Defeatist argument. It is obvious from history that taxation can be recouped from the rich, we just don't generally try to do that at the moment. We should start.
Companies are the same that both give salaries to consumers and can up prices. More taxes on companies means higher prices, job cuts, less salary increases.
It's not necessary to point out that your quote of the post-war economy is cherry-picking. Plus, after a war it's very easy to get a recovery, especially if you win it.
You talk about the US, but look at countries where the state is both heavy on taxes and inefficient. The point is that you delegate decisions on what do do and how to do it to very few people. They can be good, or be bad. Diversifying on an entire market is better.
The only thing that can save middle/low class consumers is the hope that the state won't increase taxes faster than we can save money. A culture of proper saving, of not falling for luxury items presented as necessary by our peers (or companies selling them), is the only way out. Focusing on what matters.
Most of us are instead living in the illusion that we can live a luxury life.
> look at countries where the state is both heavy on taxes and inefficient
And you accuse me of cherry picking! I have to guess, since I don't know what you regard as "inefficient", but about half of the top-ten-GDP countries are high-tax western european economies. Normalising per capita just leaves oil countries and tax havens, so I'm not sure what metric to use.
> The only thing that can save middle/low class consumers is the hope that the state won't increase taxes faster than we can save money
Do you have any evidence from history to back this up? Saving has not done the lower/middle class very much good in the last 100 years. Is there any period you can point to where living standards improved because people were saving money faster than taxes increased? Taxes were very low in the 1800s - did it enable lower class people to save money?
Price inflation isn't the only type of inflation. Monetary inflation was historically the "inflation" people focused on, and given that Ireland runs a deficit in their state budget this would be adding to the debt and inflating the money supply.
Well I'll be damned, I stand corrected! I had looked that up before posting and must have misread the a chart showing a slight surplus as shoeing a slight deficit instead.
It's wild to me how many people in the comments see any form of government doing anything as shady. It is doubly wild to me that using public funds to create art is seen as a bad thing.
You know that tax money is taken from people who could buy art with it? Or, maybe buy food and other things that they need even more than art at the moment.
You have to remember this is a site geared towards American techbros. Americans don't know what culture even means, much less why it's important. Cultural creations to Americans are shit like burger or Coke ads.
It's even worse for techbros. All techbros ever read are self-help books and Nick Land's meth-fueled ramblings. Peter Thiel is a head honcho techbro because he was able to finish The Lord of the Rings.
You ask an American what's the last painting he saw and what he thought about it and he'll bring up whatever random shit some vastly-underpaid and over-exploited immigrant will have been made to plaster over a McDonald's wall.
The "intellectual" Americans will bring up Thomas Kinkade and how his work embodies the true nature of what American society should be all about. His pieces make them long for the good old past where non-whites knew their place and segregation was a godly law.
Does the government get equity in the artist's work? If one of the recipients turns out to be the next Picasso, and makes say $1 million selling a painting (either as an NFT or a traditional art auction), does he have to give the $1 million to the government?
All these places use the word UNCONDITIONAL instead of UNIVERSAL because they are scared of printing money and paying all their citizens, while jacking up pigovian taxes on the other side.
You can't solve real world social and economic problems with hare-brained cryptocurrency schemes. If you want to support local artists then just buy their art, or give them donations in real currency.
It's not universal if only selected individuals get it. And you can't live on 325 euros in a place like Ireland. So it's not even basic income. But it's a nice temporary subsidy.
Proper basic income has never really been tried. It would have to be universal (for the entire population) and be enough to live on.
Most countries have non universal basic income in the form of benefits, state pensions, food stamps, and various social security insurance programs. One way or another people that can't or won't work still get enough to survive. Mostly, countries don't let their citizens starve. They mostly don't put them out on the streets. And if people get sick, generally hospitals/doctors will help. You won't necessarily get a very nice version of all that in most countries.
If you think of basic income like that, UBI is actually not that much of a departure from that status quo. It just establishes that as a bare minimum that everybody gets one way or another. The reason that the idea gets a lot of push back is that people have a lot of morals about having to earn stuff which then results in complex rules to qualify for things only if you are unable to earn a living. Which then turns into a lot of complex schemes to establish non universal income that comes into a variety of forms and shapes. But it adds up to the same result: everybody is taken care off.
A proper UBI would have to award it to anyone. That's what universal means. It would be a simplification of what we have now. If you are employed, you would get a chunk of income from UBI and the rest from your employer. Basically, you work to add income on top of your UBI and it's between you and your employer to sort out how much you work and how much you earn. If you get unemployed, you fall back to UBI. UBI would be untaxed. But if you work or earn income you pay taxes. Company earnings are taxed as well. And you pay VAT when you buy stuff. Those revenue streams are what already fund things today.
People think of UBI as extra cost but it could actually be a cost saving if done properly. There's a lot of bureaucracy that's no longer needed. You could still layer insurances and benefits on top of course. But that would be more optional. And you could incentivize people to work that are currently actively incentivized to not work (e.g. to not lose benefits or get penalized on their pensions).
People forget that the status quo is not free either and that it requires an enormous, convoluted bureaucracy that also costs money. UBI could end up being simpler and cheaper.
The hard part with UBI is balancing fairness and financial viability and implementing it in a way that isn't massively disruptive and complicated. You'd need to incentivize most people to still want to work while making the system generous enough that people can opt not to. That's not a solved problem and the key show stopper. Many people that work object against anyone getting anything for free. But if you consider the status quo, we already have a lot of people not working anyway. And we all pay for that already. That is actually a rather large percentage of people that are allowed to vote in many countries.
Mostly the moral arguments against UBI are what perpetuates the very inefficient and costly status quo. We just keep on making that harsher, more complicated, and more expensive. Effectively if you work, you are paying extra for all that inefficiency. Worse, you can work your ass off your whole life and still have to worry about having enough to retire, the affordability of housing, or being able to afford essential health care.
Every time UBI or some variant of it are presented, it is always presented as a benefit, so ti seems really nive. What I don't ever see addressed, is how it will work from a cost perspective. UBI is a cost: a Universal Basic Cost. Who will pay basic incomes? Businesses? The tax payers? In both of this cases, why resort to an inefficient method (the state setting prices) instead on relying on price formation as (roughly) it is today? I too don't care about moral, and I'm also sad that both supporters and detractors talk about morals. I'm honestly curious in how it could ever work: because money doesn't grow on trees, that is, value is not extracted from the Earth without labor (and innovation of technologies to work less for the same extraction work). So, in the end, it's a way of redistributing resources.
This is setting morals aside. Moral and ethics could be considered, but it's a far wider topic than a HN comment allows. An hint: nobody asks why a moral phenomenon came up in the first place. It must have had a function in society... maybe it still has today.
And "proper" UBI will never actually be tried, at least not on any significant scale. Because if you actually run the numbers you'll see that the level of taxation required plus the inflationary effects make the whole scheme unworkable.
Taxation and inflation are 2nd order effects. There's a deeper underlying reason.
The point of work is to produce the things we need to live. Somebody's gotta grow the crops, drive the trucks, mop the floors, crunch the numbers, process the paperwork, write the code, whatever.
If you offer enough UBI for people to live without working... the work won't get done, and things we need won't get made.
Has anyone ever tried to look at the concept of a Universal Basic Job? If you can show up semi-sober, you get paid to paint over graffiti, or pick up trash along the road, or something.
No, minimum wage jobs are kind of the opposite. They push underqualified people to the side, since who wants to pay $15/hour for someone only capable of producing $5/hr of value. And most jobs generally come with more obligations, like "we need you here 2pm - 10pm, Sunday, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday".
The trouble is that paying a few people to not work is very very different from paying everyone to not work.
We need people to work to produce the things they need to live. As long as this remains true, UBI can never happen. This fantasy of being able to live without working is out of touch with the cold hard reality.
> As long as this remains true, UBI can never happen.
New Zealand pays a pension to everyone over 65, whether or not they are working. No means testing and little political will to move the age upward.
About 25% of those over 65 work, and the percentage is growing.
There are multiple reasons this could be true (eg, limited savings forcing work).
The lack of means testing obviously saves money and shenanigans working out who is entitled, though the ‘universal’ nature limited how much a needy recipient can get.
not in this case though. as explained elsewhere, the artist is a dying career choice in ireland owing to economic reasons. no artist == drub society therefore the incompetent government intervenes the only way incompetence approves: free money. making the state function is much harder, and that’s not what these politicians signed up for. reducing electricity bill by 50% is a herculean task so how about jacking up taxes in one place and giving it back as free money in another? this is the modus operandi of the irish government.
The issue you're having is that thinking that because you're giving some UBI, people will suddenly "stop working" (wrong: ALL STUDIES show the exact opposite)
The problem is soon (and to some extent currently) there won't be enough work for everyone, and there definitely won't be enough to support them at a historical lifestyle level.
I guess those people continuing to live (or live semi-well) would be fantasy to you. I'm not sure where society will go at that point.
The western world has sold a 'we are improving your life' story to get buy in from the masses. What do you propose? Other options used in the past were typically state provided bread and circuses and/or waging war.
As more and more work is automated, the lifestyle level increases rather than decreases. Automation lets you produce more with the same amount of labor, increasing productivity and raising the standard of living. This is the sole reason we're not subsistence farmers right now.
War does not help the masses; it is purely destructive and one of the worst things you can do for the economy in the long run.
And yet my kids standard of living is worse. Their optimism about their employment is worse. I never used to know people working multiple very menial part time jobs to survive other than people restarting their lives. When I was young people working second jobs were saving money for a vacation or using them to pay for a fancy car, not as part of their basic budget/means of earning an income.
"Ray Dalio says America is developing a ‘dependency’ on the top 1% of workers, while the bottom 60% are struggling and unproductive"
War is unproductive and a destructive use of resources but that doesn't change that it has historically be an outlet for unused labor. My point was that if we don't approach things intelligently/intentionally we can end up with crappy unwanted/unintentional outcomes.
How soon is "soon"? I don't know about Ireland but the US unemployment rate remains near record lows. We still don't have robots that can snake out a plugged toilet.
Ray Dalio says a lot of things, only about half are correct. Where is the data? Employers are quick to fire unproductive workers and yet the unemployment rate remains low.
Also, one major confounding factor is that in 2008, gig economy apps like Uber did not exist.
The unemployment rate is measured by if someone has done an hour of paid work in the last week. Which is pretty easy to disqualify for if you do any gig economy work. And in a true slowdown the gig apps will probably stop being able to absorb people.
This is such a bad faith argument. Society has largely agreed that welfare is a valuable thing to do, from disability to social security. Calling taxation theft just says that you aren't able to be rational about this.
From reading their comments here, it seems to me that they are saying the theft occurs when labor is sold for a pittance in foreign markets so that things produced by said labor can be sold at a lower price (as compared to when more expensive labor is hired) in domestic markets. ("Basic income" = other people work as slaves in a factory somewhere so you can sit at home and "discover yourself.") The UBI would logically be an extension of that whereby the UBI program itself can only be funded by this disparity and therefore any beneficiary of such a program must be participating, however indirectly, in that theft. (Perhaps especially if one is a loud proponent of such a program.)
Ostensibly, from this perspective, one might consider whether the laborers should benefit more from their labor, rather than the consumers of products which are produced by said labor. It doesn't seem a particularly disagreeable or irrational perspective, at least on its face, though the seemingly disparaging mention of Marxism looks out of place given this perspective is rather Marxist.
Of course, whether one refers to that as "theft" is up to them; I'm just offering this alternate perspective since I didn't read it the way the parent did.
Not sure how you reconcile this take with "People don't like being robbed, PERIOD, especially not to pay for a bunch of weed smokers to sit at home relaxing on their dime. There will be blood."
Ah, missed that. For what it's worth, I can kinda read that sentence both ways but it does seem easier to read as being anti-tax. Actually, taking the two quotes juxtaposed like this, their take reads quite a lot like "think of the third-world laborers" in defense of billionaires.
I don't see much of a point in replying with this comment. It reads like your point is "I don't understand your perspective so it must be wrong", which is folly.
If you're looking for a suggestion of how to gain such an understanding, I've certainly got one of those: put more effort into arguing in favor of perspectives you disagree with. Not only will it help you to understand the disagreeable point of view, it will additionally help you to strengthen your beliefs.
You're right, I completely forgot about what you put in that first comment because it seemed like extremely wishful thinking, bordering on gaslighting. Then, given all the comments since then that have been explicitly about taxation, I assumed that you had reassessed and had something new to contribute given how thoroughly those new comments debunked those original statements. Oh well.
Do you think I did not address your thoughts in my initial reply? Do you think you are addressing others' thoughts and not attacking ridiculous men made of straw? You do not seem to be making a good case for yourself.
Jesus Christ didn't like taxation either. He preached that it was theft also. That's one big reason why they murdered him, then sent Paul (aka Saul) along to invent a new 'explanation' of the Parable of the Coin more favorable to the Roman viewpoint.
Regardless of whatever pretense you put on, you are in fact a member of a gang of thieves plotting to rob your next victim, just as Lysander Spooner explained in the 1800s:
"If any man's money can be taken by a so-called government, without his own personal consent, all his other rights are taken with it; for with his money the government can (and will) hire soldiers to stand over him, compel him to submit to its arbitrary will, and kill him if he resists." - Lysander Spooner
"If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, an honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." - Lysander Spooner
"The Rothschilds, and that class of money-lenders of whom they are the representatives and agents -- men who never think of lending a shilling to their next-door neighbors for purposes of honest industry, unless upon the most ample security, and at the highest rate of interest -- stand ready at all times to lend money in unlimited amounts to those robbers and murderers who call themselves governments, to be expended in shooting down those who do not submit quietly to being robbed and enslaved." - Lysander Spooner
"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain – that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." - Lysander Spooner
Hint: We are now in the "raising of the spirits of the dead" phase of prophecy; the above being an example of what is meant by that phrase. You Are Here.
No, it's about your viewpoint on taxation and how it's a pointless task to try and reason with a person that takes that stance. "Respecting the lives of others" doesn't preclude taxation to any rational person.
Wrong. Theft or robbery is never justified, no matter what name you give it or how you paint and pretty it up and try to pretend that it's just.
The fact of the matter is, you're sticking a gun in somebody's face and demanding money, to be used for your own selfish purposes, or under some pretense of "the public good." That's a crime. You are a criminal.
Hear the words of a man much wiser and better than you:
"If taxation without consent is robbery, the United States government has never had, has not now, and is never likely to have, an honest dollar in its treasury. If taxation without consent is not robbery, then any band of robbers have only to declare themselves a government, and all their robberies are legalized." - Lysander Spooner
The people you call "rational" are in fact slaves, just like you. That's what you were bred to be, for countless generations. Today you are capable of nothing else but blind, loyal obedience to your owners. You're a crab in a bucket, dragging any other crab back in who dares to attempt escape.
"Rationality" is not a concept your type is actually familiar with. You are incapable of any kind of independent life or thought. Every single "thought" you have was programmed into your mind. Real, actual freedom scares the shit out of you.
The only purpose of your meager existence is to make your owners more wealthy and powerful. When you no longer serve this purpose, you will be discarded--tossed into the fire and forgotten, like a burnt out cigarette stub. That's not long off now.
> What is it about robbing one group of people to pay another that you would expect to "work"?
Well, let's say we get one or two more breakthroughs in AI, and it succeeds in automating literally every job that can be done at a computer. And then it starts investing heavily in robotics. This would render human labor as uncompetitive as horse labor is today.
At this point, you have two basic scenarios: something like UBI, or (if the machines are less cooperative) John Conner.
This actually seems at least as likely these days as a warmed over libertarian argument that, "Taxes are really just slavery!"
> At this point, you have two basic scenarios: something like UBI, or (if the machines are less cooperative) John Conner.
Well, there is a third basic scenario; where the billionaires who control the AI use it to help get rid of all the poors once they're no longer necessary.
If that were true though, we'd probably see them all frantically scrambling to control AI, buying private islands and blackmail networks, getting heavily involved in pandemic preparedness programs, genetic engineering, virus research, instigating massive wars, buying up all the media and politicians, creating massive surveillance programs and building deep underground bunkers. Stuff like that.
What's better? Artists competing for the mass public, artists trying to please individual rich patrons, or artists trying to placate some government commission?
I think a mix is fine. But there are disadvantages if you weigh too heavily on the latter two. In Europe, there's already quite a lot of government subsidies for art. Try finding a British or French movie that doesn't open by announcing its connection with some government subsidy program. While I quite like quite a lot of what Europe produces (especially cinema), in the long run I suspect it won't be sustainable. Whereas the free(r) market approach of e.g. the US and Japan will end up ahead.
I feel Ireland has produced lots and lots of literary genius like James Joyce and others. Sometimes I wake up at 5am for a book club about his book for two hours and we only finish 1 page of his book.
This is the reason that is in their culture to celebrate and perpetuate art. I'm looking forward to more and more Irish art
Some instinct, waking at these memories, stronger than education or piety, quickened within him at every near approach to that life, an instinct subtle and hostile, and armed him against acquiescence. The chill and order of the life repelled him. He saw himself rising in the cold of the morning and filing down with the others to early mass and trying vainly to struggle with his prayers against the fainting sickness of his stomach.
I know a guy in Norway who got the "statsstipendiat" fund which basically gives him a very decent salary for the rest of his life, no questions asked. All he need to do is just continue doing whatever he's doing, make art and so on.
That came as a big relief as he always struggled to make money, but it's still not a thing that a lot of people get.
That being said, it seems like this is being phased out. No new "statsstipendiat" has been awarded since 2019. Before that it was mostly 1-3 persons awarded each year.
That's silly, I think more should be handed out, to encourage art and culture and let it grow organically. But I guess with the Norske Krone doing so weak and the economy and all...
I am really fond of countries creating public wealth by supporting art like this. Imagine how beautiful everything around of us could be if more were to create art instead, e.g. denying people their cancer therapy at an insurance. I yearn for that future…
I know so many "artists" in Paris, London, Barcelona and Berlin and I can't name a single one who deserves this. In my opinion any other demographic is more deserving. But as long as we're going to pretend anyone who says they do art is an artist or "you just a lowly pleb who doesn't understand art" we're going to have to play this game and pay for it.
That's an interesting idea. One has to test things to see if they can be made to work.
I think the amount is something that can be disputed, but the underlying idea is, IMO, a sound one. Similar to the "unconditional basic income" idea - again, the amount can be contemplated, but the idea is sound, even more so as there are more and more superrich ignoring regular laws or buying legislation in a democracy. That means the old model simply does not work. Something has to change - which path to pick can be debated, but something has to be done.
That's the best way to do it. Otherwise all the money will go to the rich brat children of politicians/etc who are socially connected to whoever they put on the selection committees.
Rich parents are masters of helping their children exploit the system in as many of the thousands of ways that exist. A few hundred here, another hundred there, maybe some one-off thousands here.
In most of the world, rich people are rich because they are good at exploiting government funds. It's a lifestyle.
Mostly because the kind of people who run and advocate for programs like this are actively hostile to the idea of merit. Prioritizing talented people would be antithetical to them.
Prioritizing merit would be fine if there was some way to measure merit empirically, and if that measure couldn't be gamed by anybody with money and/or connections. But this is for artists, so...
And thinks that s/he's a winner and the stuff s/he enjoys is made by winners, and the stuff s/he doesn't like is made by losers. Merit, universal, objective = ME; Worthless, narcissistic, special interest = YOU.
Killing the idea of basic income would be a good thing. It will never work and would leave a society in much the same situation as other past attempts at Marxism.
>Killing the idea of basic income would be a good thing.
Maybe we have a different look on basic income, for me it's like unemployment money with less steps and less overhead (less bureaucrats). I also dont know why you pull in marxism, but those systems normally starve because of bureaucrats (hello germany) where you have to fill out 10 papers to create one praline, and NO i dont say germany is "marxist", but they are really good at always taking the worst from both sides.
For giggles, lets say every work can be done by robots, every service by ai and energy is free (dyson sphere or whatever you want), who's left to spend money and for what? And tadaa StarTrek ;)
I raise Marx because going from people having what they earn to having what they need was pretty fundamental to the utopia he envisioned. A UBI is a huge step in that direction, complete with a state given the power to decide what we need and control distribution of resources. I'd expect the state would eventually need to take control of the means of production to stabilize the system, another big step towards Marxism.
If all work is done by robots we have much bigger challenges than who spends money. We need to consider how to counter dynamics and incentives that might favor having fewer humans dependent on the system, for example. We also need to consider how we avoid either humans losing control entirely or human control being massively centralized to a small group of people running everything.
...and when your labour, and the labour of 90+% of all humans on the planet have no economic value, we'll do what?
Continue to avoid exploring obvious solutions because certain words have been made into epithets, or failed previously because they were solving future (now imminent) problems?
If we don't fundamentally change our economic system its simple, we're all screwed.
If we have a system depending on trading our labor for money to pay for stuff, and the value of our labor goes to zero, we need a different system.
We can't paper over that fundamental crack by giving governments even more power to decide what every person "needs" and send out resources accordingly.
There are so many problems in that system. How do we actually decide prices when every consumer has the same base level of money to spend? How does the government decide what we all need or deserve? How do we avoid the corruption taking over that massive power granted to dole out resources? Are we just living in a feudal state again? Does the government need to control the means of production to keep such a system stable?
Basic income is not Marxism. Marxism is against basic income. Getting a basic income is almost the opposite to getting the actual value of your labor. I write this as someone against Marxism. You should read up on things, and not just let your biases dictate how you understand things.
Basic income is very much a step towards Marxism. Its solidly in the vein of moving from what one earns to what one needs. It empowers the state to decide what we need and to allocate those resources. And personally I see no way the government could control such a program without eventually taking direct control over means of production.
I'm also not sure why you assume I haven't read up on this topic. We may disagree, but its extremely dismissive to assume your view is right and I must simply be uninformed.
Grants operate differently over here. You have to write a submission, proposing works and budget and generally justifying. It is assessed by a committee. Politics gets involved. And a few people get larger chunks of money and the people holding the purse strings retain control on what is produced. It is essentially work on commission for the government, except you rarely get 100% of your costs covered.
Whereas in this Irish program, it is less money for more people chosen by lottery. The only editorial control is who is qualified to enter the lottery. It is also subsidizing the artist and not the art work, with artists working in cheap mediums receiving the same as artists dealing with high costs. So you are still going to need a grant or commission if you work in monumental bronze.
How is this basic income when it’s like a job? There is only 2000 spots. There was over 8000 applicants. The committe choose the most qualified applicants.
> Ireland's Culture Minister Patrick O'Donovan said the scheme was the first permanent one of its kind in the world [...] The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle.
So it's permanent, but the recipients don't get it permanently?
The program was run as a trial (time limited, not permanent). They've now made it a permanent program (no time limit, not temporary).
So to answer your question: Yes, it's permanent (or as permanent as any gov't program can be), but the recipients don't get the money for an indefinite span of time (permanently).
Do they have to be unemployed during the grant period? They could still find commissions and other stuff during that time or sell their art. And I guess for an artist either way you have a lot of new portfolio entries?
> Do they have to be unemployed during the grant period?
No, they're allowed to have other work or earn money from their art. The intent is to subsidize their income, not be their exclusive income for those three years.
> The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years
Budgets are limited so they can't give to everyone all the time. They give each batch of artists money for 3 years and then move to the next batch. Interesting to see if there's a chance they start looping over.
I think this is a great idea, and a good example of a government that's willing to experiment with creative policy ideas.
Maybe UBI works for some recipients when it's clearly time-limited and the recipients have a clear way to building a stable income, but are bottlenecked on time and capital. I think artists are a good fit for such a program.
Economics apply the same way to art. It can be one of the most profitable solo-endeavors, when your art is generally accepted as good or meaningful.
All the government-subsidized art that I've come across is straight up awful, and nobody ever actually cares for it. Typically it's weird abstract stuff.
By these standards, should I be paid an income from your tax money for my 5 side-projects on GitHub that nobody uses?
I'm reasonably sure funding for the arts is globally as low as can be.
If we applied the rule of "it has to be good to be worth it" and money is the main indicator for "good", then what about the myriad products and services that are low quality / terrible, yet make tons of money because they can afford to shove marketing down everyone's throats and thus stay relevant?
Most popular music is downright awful to me. Do I want to take their money away because I don't think they deserve it? No. On the other side of that coin I'd like to see some kind of counter balance. How many artists were considered awful until they suddenly became the biggest deal ever? Often posthumously.
This tiny sliver of funding for some people you may not like won't take anything away from you.
The early internet was so great because it was full of weird things. We've lost ALL of it, due to commercialisation. We stand to lose even more if we don't do something to fund the people who dare to be weird.
This goes right back to the thing Bezos said about how we need to become interplanetary so we can inhabit the galaxy, because if we inhabit the galaxy we could have a thousand Mozarts. I think we could already have a thousand Mozarts if they weren't busy slaving away in Amazon's warehouses.
Once there's a trillion humans in the galaxy and they're still all slaving away in warehouses, we still won't have any Mozarts.
Not everything can or should be quantified by money and economics.
My wife is an artist and she absolutely hates this.
For a start, it's a lottery. 2000 randomers who call themselves artists will get no-questions-asked income regardless of their skill or importance as artists. We have people who are full time carers for family members who get less money in their allowance, and it's means-tested.
So you can be a millionaire heir / heiress, independently wealthy and still be eligible for it. One artist on Twitter bragged about getting it, and has been using the "extra money" to go on long holidays. It's basically free world travel for her.
Also, what is an artist? There's one guy on twitter who gets this income and really, he just seems to take bad semi pornographic photos. Like the world really needs more of that.
Another lady my wife knows personally is a terrible artist, never had any talent and doesn't make money. No sense of colour, no line skills, just paints awful blobs in awful colours. She's 100% in favour of this scheme and won't shut up about it on twitter.
My wife has been struggling to make an income from her art for decades, but has created a small business around it, wedding stationery, other print fits. Guess what? She probably doesn't qualify as "an artist" she "runs a small print business". She also thinks that the government could do a lot of practically things to make life easier for artists but it's easier to take your budget and just give it to random artists. No effort, no real benefit. It's laziness and incompetence.
I know exactly one "real" artist whose paintings will genuinely be hanging on walls for hundreds of years. He has no business around his art, he literally paints and holds exhibitions to sell his work. His name is famous in art circles and you can instantly recognise his style whenever you see it. His work is truly amazing. He has a wife and two kids and struggles sometimes. The long gaps between exhibitions, the worry that an exhibition won't go well. Anxiety, depression. Did he get this magic lottery? Did he fuck.
My partner is an artist and she absolutely loves this.
For a start, it's a lottery. 2000 people who meet very broad but generally fair eligibility criteria (https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...) will get no-questions-asked income regardless of their skill or importance as artists, these being qualities that are both highly subjective and not fixed in time.
So you can be anyone – rich, poor, or something in between – and still be eligible for it. All you have to do is meet the criteria, which were created in consultation with artists.
Also, what is an artist? Thankfully that's not for me to say, because I have quite a narrow view of what art is, and that view would certainly exclude some people who were successful in the pilot.
My partner has been struggling to make an income from her art for over a decade. As she is a working artist under the pilot definition, she qualifies for the lottery even though she runs a small business (to be precise, she's self-employed – making and selling her art full time. There is a reasonable chance that you have seen it). She also thinks that the government could take many other practical steps steps to make life easier for artists, but that taking a small amount of money and giving it to random artists has a huge potential upside: practically no effort, many benefits.
I know several artists whose paintings will genuinely be hanging on walls for hundreds of years. Or prints. Or photographs. Most make ends meet, and one or two are comfortable. Their work ranges from truly amazing to decidedly mediocre (in my opinion). Did any of them get this magic lottery? Yes, some did. Others (including my partner) did not.
But in my view, arts should be funded by people in private. Any spare resources the government can muster up should be invested in improving the security and quality of life for its people. If no one ever goes hungry, and their medical needs are met swiftly, and justice is swift and accessible to all. then I can see the appeal in funding arts. But even then, sciences can meaningfully and in the long-term improve humans' lives.
I don't even know if the arts would benefit from this. Will the government arbitrate whose art is better? Private persons would, they won't fund a terrible artist. and from what I know about artists, the rejection and failure is instrumental to revelations and breakthroughs in their art. Without that, will the state be funding or facilitating mediocrity in art?
Imagine if this was for entrepreneurs. If the government will provide income so long as you're starting businesses. If you didn't have much to begin with, it might prevent you from giving up businesses that are failing, hold on to that restaurant years after it's failed because you like the vibe, and your needs are met. But if you'll eventually be in danger of running out of money to support yourself, you'll be forced to shut doors early, learn lessons and move on to something better.
I'm just making a case against dreams being kept alive artificially on life-support. And of the consequence of not having adversity when needed. I don't know if it's true, but I remember an analogy of artificial biospheres failing to grow trees and plants early on, because they didn't simulate wind. the trees needed the resistance, push and adversity of wind to thrive.
But I'll digress, I'm not saying Ireland did wrong, just putting my thoughts on the subject out there. They know what they're doing, I'm sure. And this is sounding too much like damn linkedin post, and on HN too of all places, talking about entrepreneurship, shame on me! :)
Everyone is talking about basic income as an experiment and wondering about its impact on productivity and human behavior. And everyone talks about hypothetical scenarios and a need for massive tests, without realizing that we already have a massive test data about basic income.
There's a huge group of people in western countries that has received unconditional basic income for decades, without any requirements. No questions asked, no documents required, no forced work. They could basically use that free money to flourish and pursue whatever creative activity they could imagine, without fear of economic downsides.
And we know the results already. We see it in our cities daily. But as a society, we have decided not to talk about it so we are not called racists or far right. Instead, we keep ignoring this massive group with an equivalent of basic income and keep pretending we still require experiments on its effects.
But yeah, let's test a few dozen Irish artists and keep pretending everyone needs to work for a living.
I'm not interested in guessing what your opinion is, I'm hoping you'll share it. I don't think you'll be unfairly judged; of course if you are actually being racist then it's not unfair for anyone to call that out. I don't feel like 'society' has decided not to talk about certain things to avoid name calling; I've personally only heard that kind of phrase coming from someone who holds a racist opinion but doesn't like the label, but I'm always opening to broadening my mind. Enlighten me!
I think we are at the point where we both know which groups are meant. I assume that you live in the USA, which has strong free speech and privacy laws, so you don't need to worry. The rest of us are not that lucky, so the best we can get away with is hinting and hoping no one takes close attention.
A similar program in the Netherlands once ran for decades. It produced about quarter a million uh, tangible units of art, which not even government institutions wanted anymore, not even for free. The warehouses became full and dusty.
This was later one of the motivations to cancel the program.
BTW credentialism - good or bad? It certainly seems to me that the idea of credentials has crept from medicine, law and engineering into formerly freer and more bohemian territories. An idea of a perepiska for singers or actors would be considered absurd by most people in history. But once money transfers are in place, bureaucracy inevitably follows.
Some accreditations are strong. Others are nearly useless.
Reputation is easily hacked these days. Letters of recommendation don't mean what they used to. Something needs to fill that space - especially when you're filtering down to 2,000 applicants in a country of 5 million people.
Sure, there's a lot of dodgy doctors and lawyers out there. No shortage whatsoever, despite the efforts towards strict credentials. But I'd still rather have someone with a medical degree fixing my broken leg than a random chirurgeon.
We should probably discriminate between the sort of credentials that is meant to prevent harm to unsuspecting clients, and the sort of credentials that serves as a basis for various privileges.
The latter is quite a bit closer to the old feudal system of professional guilds, which were mostly concerned with defending the interests of their own members.
I wonder if there's a lot of controversy here. I'm not Irish, but I would really hate to be subsidizing the guy who taped a banana to a wall, for instance. In the general sense, I think subsidizing the arts can be a smart move, but so much art these days is nothing of the sort.
In Iceland, if a band can get an international tour scheduled, the Icelandic government will pay their tour costs. I believe Ireland has a similar plan of support for artists who can gain an audience abroad. Those nations know that the creativity of their people is a renewable resource and an economic engine as well as a source of cultural "soft power".
I absolutely do not expect sillycon valley libertarians to understand or appreciate any of this so probably a good idea to avoid the comment section here...
the irish government is adept at misplaced priorities, (very) short-term thinking, pursuers of feel-good vibes, basically everything besides running a state. incompetence here has bred the need for more and varied welfare programs just so we can have a variety of careers that cater to the needs of life. of course, necessity of the arts is undisputed. but can the artist make a career here when the money you make from a show, including tips, can’t pay your utility bills? when your income can’t afford you decent accommodation?
Countries like Norway that has this has lead to a scandal of the artists who decide who gets money, self dealing and giving grants to their friends. You are either in the group and get money or outside and get none.
Get rid of it. State sanctioned art is is probably worse than no art.
This is absolute peak irony given that Ireland is the number two valiant protector of US big tech - right behind the US itself - including the main AI corps. Shielding them from prosecution for all the laws they violate across a population of 450+ million. And then they give their own citizens this UBI from a sliver of the protection money they get paid. Fuck you, got mine.
It's despicable, they're as much as an insider threat as Hungary.
Dublin's Grafton Street with it's buskers is and was so unique to this American. I wondered if anywhere else in the world matches the musicianship heard on that street and in Dublin's bars? Music is engrained in it's culture in a way I have not experienced before(tho the weird looks I received wearing my baseball cap in Dublin was off putting as I had not experienced that in Berlin, Paris, Reykjavik, Amsterdamn, etc).
Overall It's a bit sad going to American bars and not hearing the whole bar singing along to the musician up on stage. Amercia's culture I feel is way more focused on celebrity then musicianship.
Grafton St buskers at their best are really really good, but there are also some very average buskers there every day too. New Orleans is a stand-out in the US where you can find world-class jazz bands playing on the streets.
Nashville has plenty in the evenings, and then you can find hot spots in some cities. I've seen regular buskers in Boston, Seattle, Sarasota, and Boulder - usually in pedestrianized touristy quarters.
Guess it's Dublin's bar culture and vibe that really stood out to me. I've been to the French Quarter yet don't recall almost everyone in each bar there singing along to their local musicians. Musicians who are really good to great like in Dublin's bars I experienced in December.
In Dublin's best music venues, nobody is singing along because it's brand new material from brand new artists. If you're singing along to well known songs in Temple Bar then I'm afraid you're missing some of the best music the city has to offer, in venues like Whelan's, Workmans, Sin É, The Grand Social etc.
Because in America we do not appreciate local musicians as i experienced in Dublin nor do we sing alongs in majority of our bars (maybe there are a few but none ive been to throughout the US & its not apart of our culture). We are a more subdued culture in this regards and as I believe worship/appreciate celebrity musicians over local musicians.
I heard Emily Blunt say on Graham Norton, "We know your American with your baseball cap." I know that's the UK but maybe it holds true for Dublin too.
The looks were strange and from women in their 20s as I walked around Dublin. Im not much to look at yet do not receive such looks or rude behavior (one purposely did not hold the bathroom door at starbucks as I waited my turn 25 feet away waiting to get in rather she purposely pushed the door to close) at home in the DC region or my travels throughout the US and Europe. Another American mentioned a similar experience too. My friend traveling with me he was not wearing a hat & did not experience any such thing.
Hmm, I'm pretty sure there was something else going on in this instance. Baseball caps are an extremely common sight in Dublin. I frequently wear one when I'm out and about here, and nobody has ever taken umbrage or passed comment.
No, that's just Europe. First, they often pay to visit a bathroom there so the pushing the door close is just preventing you from freeloading. Second, Europe is denser than the US and so has cultures that don't have as negative a take on being rude. Some parts are worse than others.
Busking and live music is definitely still around. Especially in larger cities. I agree that the neighborhood bar scene sucks but that's more an issue that everyone has to drive home. Once you get to a place with good transportation or a downtown hub it all comes roaring back.
This is fascinating because it implicitly acknowledges that some valuable work does not have a clear market path. Artists create cultural value that is difficult to monetize directly.
The same is true for a lot of open source and indie software. I have been running a free AI companion bot on Telegram for months and the operating cost (5/month server) comes entirely out of pocket. The users get genuine value from it but there is no revenue model that does not compromise the experience. If I add ads or charge money, the thing that makes it feel like talking to a friend (no transactional friction) disappears.
Ireland is essentially saying: some things are worth publicly funding because the market undersupplies them. That is a healthier framing than trying to force everything into a subscription box.
Then there are people who see art only as a rich person's pursuit. It can be, but it doesn't need to be.
I am reminded of Daniel James also known as Gwyrosydd, his bardic name. He was a Welsh language poet, who wrote probably the greatest Welsh language song, Calon Lân (means 'a pure heart'). People throughout Wales sing this song 130 years later. It is a proud continuation of a bardic tradition in Wales going back probably thousands of years. It also encompasses the Welsh culture of choral singing, noted in early recorded history.
Daniel James spent his life slaving away in an ironworks, making crucible steel. John Hughes, who wrote the tune worked in an office there.
I like to imagine what they could have done had they been at leisure to work and perform all day.
Go Ireland, great scheme. I wish we had it over here in the UK.
In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. Seattle successfully exterminated their entire arts, music, and culture scene by raising the cost of living sky high.
[1]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-...
[2]https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php
It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.
If you go to Liverpool (which significantly punches for musical history), it’s actually manageable on 20hr/weeek minimum wage.
You’re not talking sustaining a family or anything, but that life has been gone for 40 years at this point.
In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation.
Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?
You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works.
The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort.
By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.
Nice places to live can't support all the people that want to live there.
Because demand is, for all intents and purposes, insatiable, the dollar value of housing/property isn't based on supply and demand because supply can't practically be increased to affect demand. Instead, the price is related to what a prospective buyer can afford to pay _every month_ and, thus, is related to interest rates. Interest rates go down, prices go up to the point where a prospective buyer's mortgage payment would be the same.
People who bring up the (un)affordability of housing are never talking about Oklahoma, they're talking about the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City, Seattle, Portland, etc. All places that are so desirable, they can't practically support everyone that wants to live there.
I can't figure out how to make the math make sense even if I were to build a house in the middle of nowhere. Time and materials is the real killer.
Some day, when AI eliminates software development as a career, maybe you will be able to hire those people to build you houses for next to nothing, but right now I don't think it matters where or how many you build. The only way the average Joe is going to be able to afford one — at least until population decline fixes the problem naturally — is for someone else to take a huge loss on construction. And, well, who is going to line up to do that?
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/3024-N-Vermont-Ave-Oklaho...
https://research.upjohn.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1314...
But you're right: The cost of new construction anchors the used market. Used housing is so expensive because new housing is even more expensive. But we already knew that.
No need to build new, a plethora of affordable homes are available.
Except it is not clear who can afford new construction either. It is even more expensive.
What part of your idea was supposed to stop that happening and why didn't it work?
The part where people see their money burning away paying maintenance and tax on deteriorating assets.
Why are people holding assets unused?
Because they don't believe that the city will allow sufficient development to allow them to purchase like-assets in the future if they chose to reinvest and the carrying cost is minimal because council taxes are trivial relative to the value of the asset. If my research is correct, Kensington council taxes are under 10k USD per year.
We could tax it and pay some of the money to artists?
Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?
Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises.
The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.
Baby steps. Everyone deserves it, but getting there in one step is politically impossible almost everywhere in the world. Nobody’s saying only the arts deserve subsidies. It’s just easier to justify. But if we want everyone to have basic income, we need to applaud whenever it happens, even if it’s a small subset, and argue they deserve it and that we should have more of it. Complaining about the unfairness of artists being subsidized demonstrates and adds to the political difficultly. If we accept that it’s unfair for a subset, then we might never get basic income since the rich don’t need it and many don’t want it.
It definitely isn't. In fact this is so polarising that I wonder if it's an attempt to poison the concept of basic income for decades to come.
I don’t know what you mean at all, why is this “so polarizing”? A lot of the art world already runs on subsidies, and it’s well known that it’s more difficult to make a living as an artist than your examples of jobs that come with steady pay, even if it’s low. Solo artists don’t get any steady income at all, and many have to take other jobs in order to support their art work. The general public where I live (in the US) is absolutely more willing to fund the arts than to fund generally low paying steady-income jobs, especially steady-income jobs that are already funded via taxes like teachers and firefighters. This is why I claim it’s easier to justify subsidizing artists. What is the reason you claim it’s not easier to justify, and where is the evidence your claim is true?
Following the announcement of Budget 2026 last October, I think this expenditure came into sharp focus, as the budget was considered to be almost hostile to workers and families, and anecdotally I think it has become more controversial since.
That said, it is not unpopular, just polarising.
It's a bad scheme, it divide's your population into people who have to create "wealth", and people who create "art".
Yes creating art (or preserving rare potatoes[1]) should be supported by your government if it's not survivable in a capitalistic society, however having different rights because of your occupation is not better then the middle ages.
[1] https://irishpotatofederation.ie/varieties/
most people don't "create wealth". They're forced to serve up half of their awake time to someone that is "wealthy", most likely through inheritance.
>We could just tax the hell out of the rich
Then they leave your country...however if someone could make it international....
I think it should go a lot further than it does but it seems unambiguously positive even by your own framing.
So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?
That's what i meant with the potatoes, the government pays for the field with the rare potatoes, and the standardized potatoes make wealth.
>So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?
With free housing (art community's), tax free stuff (for small to medium sales etc) like it's done today. And to be honest i think 99.5% of artist dont do a full-time-art-job, most of them do other stuff too...and that's good.
Is my friend who plays the didgeridoo in his free time now an artist if he declares it's suddenly his full-time occupation?
One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state).
On a base your are right, not everything that's good for societies is compatible within a capitalistic system. But this is just a complete wrong step.
Giving housing forces people to live in certain places. What if you are a traveling musician, you might be better off with a van.
It is like the Victorian view of giving charity. 'Don't give them money, give them food', like the people don't know what they need.
Art community's are most always self managing, i would argue finding out who makes art is much more complicated.
>Giving housing forces people to live in certain places.
No one is forced to take free housing or being an artist, if you want something for free you have to play by rules.
>like the people don't know what they need
True, but why are people who are artist different from anyone else, that's my critique. Why is creating art more important then preserving art, being a scientist, a rare-potato-farmer, a retro-game-preserver...or a small town politician?
I don't think it is helpful to frame it in terms of, 'sure they should get it, but what about other people doing public good? Since the others can't get it, the artists shouldn't'. How about saying, 'this is a great start, how do we get a broader scheme for other philanthropic causes'?
I think it's the only logical way, same right for everyone, occupation is not a factor for additional rights.
> 'this is a great start,
And the end...sadly.
Is this really a risk, given UBI is generally minimal? Anyone who wants to live on it full-time to support their art, whatever it may be, is welcome to it. It's not like they're sitting back and getting rich, here.
> One example, why exclude people like Geo-scientists who sometimes dont even get any money (except they work for big-oil or the state).
Because "UBI for everyone who deserves it" is a much harder, bigger step, and fighting against small wins because they don't include literally every single outlier case you can think of is absurdly non-productive, not to mention that it's a vacuous counter-argument.
the wealth in this case isn't monetary, it's material production, the productive work of people who create material objects, including your food and shelter. If it was about monetary stuff the government would just print the artists whatever amount of money they need. But that money has to be spent to buy from those who produce the stuff the artists need to live. Who's sponsoring the wealth producers?
You could not be more aloof couldn't you? Guess what pays for the world to run? Some banana taped to a wall?
I don't even know how to parse that sorry. I could be or couldn't be?
>Guess what pays for the world to run?
The sun? Or something deeper than that? God?
Edit: I think the actual answer is, 'a sense of humour', especially in today's world.
We've seen what happens to pieces of the world that prioritize economic production over everything else, and it isn't pretty. We have a number of laws and regulations preventing that sort of production at all costs behavior.
Taking this on face value without the rest of his oeuvre as context and value is being disingenuous.
It's the same as cities/governments spending on free public basketball courts/tennis courts/running tracks. I come from a country with none of those things, and the difference that makes on the average fitness/skill level of the population is massive compared to places where those things exist.
Both basic income, and public sporting infrastructure have a significant (but not unreasonable) upfront cost, but the payoff in even 2 years time will be massive. Provided the economics check out, there's no reason to not give it a shot.
Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here. Of course nobody thinks that only money has value. If only money had value, why would anybody exchange money for, say, a bread?
What many people are wondering about, is whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. Because if it would be equal, then one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.
"The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"
This came about as a mixture of greater economic activity from participants, cultural impacts that saw public-facing artist activities increase, and improvements to wellbeing of participants that reduced their requirement for psychological interventions by the state. The state also predicts that the further roll-out of this program will benefit consumers with lower prices for artistic works, as there will be more supply overall.
The scheme has been quite popular here in Ireland. Given the history of Ireland when it comes to art (both in the sense of spoken and written word, and in other mediums), it makes sense to introduce a scheme like this to safeguard and uplift those who produce art.
[1] https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...
> "The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"
Okay, so if you read the CBA, the net fiscal cost of the pilot was:
* Gross pilot cost (2021–2025): ~€114 MM
* Tax revenue: ~€36 MM
* Social protection savings: ~€6.5 MM
* Net fiscal cost: ~€72 MM
So for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received 37¢ in fiscal return. So it's an unambiguous fiscal cost, a net loss.
Of the "Total monetised benefits", €80 MM of the benefit was in "wellbeing gains", as measured by the WELLBY test, which is calculated based on a single survey question:
> “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?
The €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", which is the sole decided of whether this pilot was a net positive or a net negative to society, is because on average, the 2,000 pilot scheme participants had a very approximate 0.7–1.1 increase in score when asked the above question during the pilot as compared to before the pilot. Each 1 point is deemed to be worth €15,340.
That's it. There's no economic return - it's a proven economic cost. There's no proven social benefit. No demonstrated effect on art prices or availability.
The pilot was successful - if you consider it to have been - solely because the artists who received payments as part of the pilot had an improvement in Wellby satisfaction score when they were asked via survey. If you remove this factor, the pilot was an abject failure.
You know what would have been a worthwhile use of that €114 MM? Improving the pay and conditions of our naval personnel. That way, the nation might now be able to put more than one patrol boat out to sea at a time.
From where I'm sitting, this is theft, its forced wealth redistribution, from people that are potentially already struggling,to people that choose to slum it as artists. Its not even means tested, this really will result in money transferring from those on the edge of poverty to rich art school kids.
There's currently 16,000 homeless / at risk people in Ireland, including 5000 children [0]. I can think of at least one better use for that money.
[0] https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/social-affairs/2025/11/28...
In this comment society seems to mean "the government, and its tax revenue profit/loss statement"
In the previous comment society seems to be construed more broadly and encompass both non-economic activity and economic activity outside the collection and disbursement of tax funds.
No, that's not correct. I specifically separated the pure economic impact from the society impact, but the only societal impact used to quantify the success of the pilot scheme is that the people paid a basic income by the scheme had higher life satisfaction as measured by a single survey question.
That is the basis used by Government to claim that it's a social benefit.
Personally, I support the arts and I think that culture, health, housing accessibility, safety, fitness, happiness, and companionship are all better measures of a society than GDP or other fiscal metrics.
Right now, we have a health, housing, and social crises desperate for resources - resources that are allocated exclusively through Euro budgets. This pilot scheme has not demonstrated any cultural or social impact at all. Only the aforementioned increase in recipient satisfaction.
Meanwhile people in dire situations face multi-year waits for operations, or dying of a treatable stroke/MI due to a lack of ambulances, or death by suicide as the mental health services are overwhelmed.
Is the WELLBY score of these artists more important the WELLBY score of parents awaiting their kid's operation for the second or third spring? Or burying their children? Or raising them in hotel rooms?
Ireland is only economically successful. We are failing our citizenry abysmally outside of fiscal terms and basic income for artists should be allocated while hundreds of more pressing needs are left unmet.
From reading your comment I think this observation applies to your own understanding, not the gp's.
> whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. [...] one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.
You might not see it but this is effectively equivalent to thinking only money has value, because you're describing a system whereby value is defined by money. Your dichotomy assumes anything that cannot be sold has no value, & anything that is sold is only as valuable as its price. The emergent conclusion from that formula is that only money has value.
It's worth noting that it also follows from this that value is defined by people with purchasing power. If for example the only cohort who value any given piece of art cannot afford to financially support the artist creating said art, not only is the art & the artist's work without value, but by extension so too are the perspectives, autonomy & - ultimately - the lives of that cohort without value.
> Money is just the measure of value
Money is the measure of market value. If you believe it's the measure if inherent value, you believe anything outside of the market has no value. E.g. that human lives have no value outside of waged labour (or heck, even slavery).
The point here is the monetary value is a model of value, not the definition of it. If you are defining an item's value by it's market price, then you believe what the gp was describing: that "only money has value" (since it defines all value).
Because the skills and effort needed to market and sell your art to an audience are not equal to the skills and effort needed to produce good art [1].
I agree that there could be other complementary or better solutions compared to this scheme. But as long as the above premise is true, not every good artist will want or be able to sell well.
[1] However you define this. Supposedly, Van Gogh was a lousy salesman, but a good artist.
> equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return
This seems incredibly shortsighted.
Is this passive aggressive insult really necessary?
> Because we use taxes as a process to crowdsource funding more effectively
I’m sure you will agree that not everything that everybody wants can get funded. The debate here is how to draw the line.
I think critical shared physical infrastructure occupying a limited valuable resource is nothing like art, so I’m struggling to follow your argument.
I think simplistic cliche's deserve derision - if you don't like that, perhaps don't use them? It's hardly a shot at the writer to suggest that what he wrote is mediocre.
> I’m sure you will agree that not everything that everybody wants can get funded. The debate here is how to draw the line.
No, your argument was that I should fund things myself directly. I pointed out that that's an inane and boring argument. If you want to debate other things, then do that in the first place.
> so I’m struggling to follow your argument.
It might help if you re-read your own arguments first, instead of trying to make them into new ones. Things people want funded by the government get funded when they vote for them to get funded either directly or via representatives - if you don't like those things, there is a clear way to change the algebra. In no case is suggesting people just like, "pay some extra taxes, man" a useful are additive observation.
The same way it solves all problems: poorly, yet better and more fairly than corporations do.
> Why can’t a private organization replicate that?
Private organizations are driven by profit motive. Profit motive is usually in a negative correlation with fair results in these sorts of situations. If you mean a church or non profit, then, because those don't represent a region of people, and there's no petition mechanism to change their behavior if they're bad. "We'll stop giving them money" great so you're back to my original point then: profit motive.
> How was art produced previously without the existence of these programs?
Hard to say, but there sure is a lot of it, from as long ago as ten thousand years, so personally I think it's safe to say there were lots of reasons beyond either an S Corp or 501(c) buying popular art, or a liberal democracy funding it.
Clearly the artists somehow managed to convince government to support the scheme, why can’t the same people form a non—profit and convince ordinary members of the public to support the same scheme in a non-profit structure?
That way we have a smaller government, lower taxes, and the people who care can directly spend their money on addressing this problem - rather than have their money going to taxes where it might be spent somewhere they don’t agree with!
Nobody has to argue about money being spent on things they don’t care about. Everybody is happy.
"Public goods" like parks, museums, bridges, roadways, transit, nature preserves, community spaces, and public safety services produce both direct value to their immediate users as well as substantial diffuse value to their community. Direct value can be captured by user fees, tolls, subscriptions, etc but capturing diffuse value is challenging. A park raises surrounding property values even for people who do not visit the park. Good transportation infrastructure increases the value of surrounding land and and productivity per capita even for nonusers. Relying solely on user fees may force some of these entities to close or fall into disrepair, thereby reducing overall value by substantially more than it would have cost to maintain them. And in some cases shifting the cost burden to direct users substantially lowers the diffuse value, for example back when fire fighting companies would let houses burn unless their owners paid them, ultimately resulting in more overall community fire damage.
In these cases, subsidizing these public services with taxes (optimally Georgist land-value taxes) is an economically rational decision.
One could plausibly argue that artists similarly produce diffuse value e.g., raising the profile of their nation or culture, making their neighborhood a more desirable place for people with money. Not only do artists typically struggle to collect a share of this diffuse value, as renters the very value they create often ends up pricing out of their community. I could imagine cases where it is a net benefit for a government to subsidize such entities if such subsidy is less than the fraction of the diffuse benefit that ends up being collected by taxes.
I have no insight as to whether this scheme in particular is net positive, please see sibling posts for that. I'm just explaining that such arrangements are both economically rational and extremely common in high-functioning societies.
Expect something? Yes. Enforce it? Not sure for the first tranche, but make it a prerequisite for continued funding.
One big obstacle is, of course, how to define what to expect from each artist. For example, you can't expect the same level of output from sculptors and musicians. Another big obstacle is obviously the expected quality of output.
I don't pretend to know the solutions to either of those obstacles, but they should be surmountable [1]. I think it's fair to expect some output in exchange for funding, but it doesn't have to be a high expectation.
Personally, I like the idea of hiring artists as full-time with particular projects in mind [2], but intentionally leaving ~50% of their time to personal projects.
[1] Perhaps artist communities themselves could discuss ways to make this exchange work for all parties.
[2] Murals, restorations, beautification of public spaces, etc.
The expectation doesn't have to be too specific or unrealistic. If you agree on some common ground [2], everything else can be fair game for the artist.
Your analogy with the bridge would apply if art also had a minimum viable version. Collapsed to its functional requirements, you could say that visual art is something to look at. But I doubt either party, especially the funding body or the public, would be happy without inserting some quality requirements (i.e., what makes something nice to look at).
Many artists do commissions, so you can see this as a commission with deliberately underspecified requirements.
[1] I won't get into the disagreements between the Pope and Michelangelo, and it's certainly not an example of a good contract, but we can assume that both parties were somewhat satisfied in the end.
[2] For example, both parties need to like it. Or the patron doesn't have to like it, but it needs to appeal to some public audience.
My understanding is that the Irish scheme doesn't force any specific work for the three year period, though I'd expect any artist who takes a three year, ~$60k grant and uses it to do literally nothing may find it hard get a grant in the future, potentially ending their art career. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if a few recipients end up doing that, in which case it's an economic question as to whether the net loss from such freeloaders is more or less than the cost of the bureaucracy necessary to prevent them.
Of course the more fundamental question is whether the whole scheme is even worthwhile. Clearly the Irish government believes that their trial in 2022 demonstrated a positive financial return, but my guess it that it will take decades before we can truly answer this question.
Some art, like classical music composition, is and has been propped up by grants and wealthy donors since forever.
Whether that’s a good allocation of resources is of course entirely subjective :)
Better to amortize the cost across the population and have public works. Like we do for infrastructure. Seems to work just fine.
It's easy to channel indignation toward those people and not, say, their corporate masters that seem to hold everyone's strings.
Are you against all taxation?
Capital owners aren't the only ones taking a risk, laborers do as well. Why is it that only capital risk is considered?
SBA loans are given at the whim of a bank, who is looking for a very strong guarantee of return on investment. It can also come with terms that restrict business behaviors - this is HN, just imagine Bain capital gave you ten million dollars, do you then get to run your business in a way that targets a healthy, sustainable profit margin with albeit flat growth line?
Anyway that's boring and been done before. Surely after ~300 years of plain Jane capitalism we can start playing with more exotic modes of organization? Why do only the banks get to invent new financial instruments to destroy markets with?
Whereas with taxes, if you don't like them, you can elect a different politician. Look at the Americans, they do it all the time, their tax rates go all over the place.
I want roads, libraries, firetrucks, and for my poop to vanish into oblivion when I pull the toilet handle. I don't really want my money to buy my boss a new car.
Another question is would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks? In the 1800s most of the great literature was written by normal guys writing on the side, they need that experience to make great art. Heart of Darkness is never going to be written by an academic. Hemmingway doesn't write anything without his experiences in Italy, Spain and France in WWI, Civil War and WWII, if he was just a beat reporter forever, all of his great inspirations don't amount to much. Tolstoy and Doestoyevsky are notable exceptions.
As for the second question ("would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks"), well, life and art really are too varied to draw the kind of conclusions the following comment implies.
Here's a non-exhaustive list of eligible types:
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...
"Dad why are you working your hands off? Well... the government decided to pay people to "make art" instead of working. How come? Well... nope I have no fucking idea"
Living in a one room dwelling, with a shared bathroom is unpleasant, but safe, warm, and has a bed. Having enough for basic food, but no luxuries.
My point is, welfare(not disability, welfare) should sustain. Keep safe. Alive. Free from elements. But absolutely be something a normal person wants to escape from.
And there will always be those happy with the above, and .. well, OK.
But whether artist or whomever, basic living in hard times should be there for you.
Why? We are well beyond the scarcity that would require this.
The person in my description would be housed, fed, safe. To this you say, we're well beyond the scarcity that would require this.
Believe it or not, people still work to produce almost everything. While aided with machinery, farmers are human beings and work. People actually physically build houses. Everything that you own, is assembled or manufactured from components and parts that come from human labour.
If someone is going to live off the backs of the work, and effort of other human beings, then certainly they should not live in luxury. They should, in fact, feel as if they are putting other people out, which in fact they are.
I've already expressed a situation where I want nobody to starve. Where I want nobody to not have a roof over their head, if they're having a difficult time, where I want them to be safe.
This is an extremely generous, extremely kind, extremely compassionate thing for me, or anyone else to do. To give some of my daily effort to help others, is laudable.
To this you say, why don't you give more? To this you say, it's not enough to be housed, but why doesn't somebody get a free large screen TV too? To this you say, why doesn't somebody get more than just the basic necessities? Can't they have steak, a large home, all, provided by the efforts of others?
Do you not realize how completely selfish that is? It's completely out of touch with the whole dynamic of people working to produce goods, and other people just getting those goods without effort.
Or is it more of have to apply to be subsidized and the government chooses what art is worth subsidizing, which won’t result in good art, more just government building lobby bad art.
Instead, focus on taxing scarce resources, especially since we cannot make more of it. If it's natural resources coming out of the grounds such as minerals and oil, it becomes a severance tax.
If we're talking about occupying land, then it's a Land Value Tax.
You could also tax negative externalities like pollution or traffic congestion.This is known as a Piguovian tax.
I wonder how far are we from a song that is entirely generated by AI and becomes as loved as a song created by a human, and is still sung/played by people decades later? It feels weird to even think about it.
If AI does get as good as humans at creating art (I think it might), what happens then? Will human generated art be still as respected/valuable? Will humans even bother creating art at that stage?
On the topic of basic income - people seem to have strong opinions on both sides. I guess time will tell, but there isn't anything wrong in experimenting, at minimum. To those who strongly oppose UBI - don't we already give bailouts, huge tax breaks, subsidies to entire industries etc, to the extent of rewarding bad behavior (criminal behavior even) - like the one that caused 2008 crash? Why is corporate handouts okay but not UBI?
I hope one day you are able to acknowledge all the people in this world that live for purpose instead of for making Lumberg’s stock go up half a point.
Humans need basic income (or at least resources) and to have culturally valuable work to do. Art and craft esp as a form of human expression seems like we should ASSUME that humans want to do this, that we as a society value the human energy that goes into it.
I am not trying to turn all threads into AI debate, but AI threat to art is a legit concern. If AI mass produces art at comparable quality level to humans, it would be near impossible for humans to compete for other humans' attention. If nobody sees my art, would I still make art? Maybe some humans will, because creating art makes them happy and they don't care if anyone sees their art or not. But many humans will give up
I would hope that humans would always value human generated art, but these days it seems that many businessmen and AI bros do not. Perhaps they are not human.
effective tax rates
0% ... not realistic outside very unique circumstances. 25% ... feels fair to me. 33% ... still fair but yeah 1 out of every 3 days worked you start to feel that. 50% ... the border of fair and unfair. if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.
Now, when you are near that border of fair and unfair and then you see John Q Artist getting his whole list comped using tax money that pushes the somewhat fair into unfair territory real fast.
Now, we already have situations similar to this in most countries either from subsidies, gov't spending you don't agree with, corruption, waste, etc.
All of that should be reduced but when you see your neighbor living free while you slave away you feel that differently.
> if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.
How fairly you made that money in the first place and what you get in return in the form of government services makes all the difference.
I propose allocating upfront the work, so that those who disagree don't have to contribute into the "done" part of those who allocate it in a weird way.
Ah the good old "if you're homeless just buy a house" argument, only this time coming from the mentality of a statist.
You want to unilaterally decide that you don't want to pay much tax on income, billionaires decide that they don't want to pay much tax on capital gains, yet both of you want to continue living in a society where you can buy cheap bread baked from flour milled from wheat grown on subsidized farms, heavily reliant on public infrastructure, and you want to drink clean water and drive on public roads, all of which is paid for through taxes that you want to opt out of, and somehow you don't see a problem with that?
You can't pick and choose parts of society that benefit you and opt out of your duties, that's not how society works. All of those parts that you don't see value in are essential to someone else.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland_as_a_tax_haven
For select megacorps that have the luxury of being in a business that lets them structure themselves that way, sure.
For the laboring peasantry it's a very different story (though the actual rates vary, this goes for most "tax havens"). Ireland in particular has a high VAT so if you spend a lot of your income on consumption (which most individuals do) you will get very screwed by that.
They don't care about the art, only the clout it brings them in terms of hoarding a limited thing people value.
Art is a medium that is used to convey and stir emotion in the viewer. It's not currency to anyone but shallow fools.
Am I eligible if I doodle on a piece of paper once in a while? What about if I decided to expose a urinal? Or paint a can of soup?
Part of being an artist (at least it used to be) is struggle.
Probably nothing.
The idle rich and trust fund kids aren’t exactly know for producing, well, anything of value, really.
Getting paid to sit around all day and do fuck-all isn’t exactly character building.
I reckon the 20 years as an iron puddler he had done by then had built his character already.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientist... - "An independent scientist (formerly called a gentlemen scientist) is a scientist with a private income who can pursue scientific study independently as they wish without excessive external financial pressures."
Including: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (Evolution), Ben Franklin, Robert Boyle (Boyle's gas law), Oliver Heaviside (electromagnetic theory, co-axial cables), Alexander von Humboldt (established modern Geography), Thomas Jefferson, Leopold Kronecker, Alessandro Volta (voltaic pile battery)
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist - "Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. "
Including "Charles Babbage, Henry Cavendish (discovered Hydrogen), Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Thomas Young (Young's modulus of elasticity, eyeball focusing), Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen)
Rene Decartes "arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life."
And basically any tenured professor paid to do whatever interests them, or academic or researcher, especially mathemticians, hired and paid for blue sky research, all the places like Bell Labs that HN loves.
So you’re kind of refuting something I didn’t say.
Surely no one would intentionally suggest we pay people to sit around with the hope they produce something anyone will be bothered to read (or whatever) in 2000 years.
To be fair, the majority has been conditioned in thinking that only money should be your purpose, that's literally how capitalism works, even arts now is a product that need to be sold to the highest bidder, or manufactured in the millions to be sold.
The only person I know getting this money was already semi-retired after selling their house in London and retiring to the Irish countryside, and basically just noodles around on the guitar now and then.
The UK has this with lottery funding for athletes - it started really positive - but is now a lottery funded gap year for private school kids
Correct, the programme is FOR artists. How could this possibly work otherwise? By somebody stating they intend to become an talented artist?
How else would you gauge merit if not through their portfolio of prior work?
We're not objectively deciding what is art and what isn't, up front. Who decides what counts? Who's to say an AI generated self-published vomit novels on Amazon aren't as valid as anything else.
>Who decides what counts?
Clearly for this scheme the people approving the applicants and those setting the criteria for those reviewing the portfolios.
A better line of questioning might be who decided on these people and what makes them qualified to judge but you'll find yourself going down a 'Who guards the guardians' conundrum.
Your comment reminds me of when some member of the audience challenged film critic Robert Ebert on who made him the 'boss' to decide which films were good and which were bad.
He simply answered with the name of the owner of the building since he authorised the production of his film review show.
Maybe the issue is with the definition of the profession of artist, that's it's too vague and fluid allowing anyone to claim to be one without much hassle.
But then if you have a strict definition of the artist profession, everyone will rush to conform to the bare minimum of that in order to score those benefits.
So maybe then the core issue is with the welfare state that unfairly picks winners and losers instead of being "universal".
Artist have exited way before the welfare state has. They were poor and had patrons who supported them if they loved their work. So then why do we need the state to subsidize this now? Do we have proof this leads to higher quality art?
Seriously though, having a basic income that is not basic was bound to give issues.
The whole point is that paying everyone a fixed $X amount regardless of anything else is extremely easy to manage, so you can drop all the bureaucracy that builds up around welfare. But, yes, in practice it also acts as a progressive income tax of sorts even with an otherwise flat tax rate (which allows for further simplification) because delta between UBI check and taxes is going to gradually decrease as income rises and eventually becomes negative.
That said even with just personal income tax it's viable. I once crunched the numbers on what it'd take to have everyone in US receive the current federal min wage as UBI payment, assuming a flat surface tax (i.e. relying solely on that UBI check to make it progressive), and it was somewhere in the ballpark of 50%.
Of course, you can get there much easier if you go for the sacred cows such as capital gains. Raising that to the same level as regular income alone would bring a lot of tax revenue.
We could also start taxing AI, since it is (or at least positioned by those deploying it) the immediate cause why so many people are going to find themselves out of jobs.
Frankly we don’t know the selection criteria for the program this year. It will be only released in April.
But we know the selection criteria for the pilot program, and for that this was not true.
> So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.
Again we don’t know the full program’s eligibility criteria yet. Under the pilot program there were two separate streams. Those who were recently trained, and those who were “practicing artist”.
Your hypothetical “artist who gave up art” might fall into the “recently trained” stream and thus be eligible.
Or if they gave up on art a long ago (more than 5 years), there are ways they can get back to it. They can start practicing their art on the side again, produce a portfolio of work and thus become eligible again. They don’t need to be full time artist for this.
> The only person I know getting this money
In the pilot program they randomly selected 2000 participants from those who where eligible. So to get the money in the pilot program you both needed to be eligible, have applied for it, and be lucky enough in the lottery.
Because of this lottery whoever is getting it today is not representative of who is all eligible for it.
The article also mentions that overall the program had a positive impact.
https://ifs.org.uk/publications/health-related-benefit-claim...
You can argue that nobody is systematically abusing the system but numbers go up. To those paying the taxes to support these benefits that sort of growth looks like abuse.
Yes, but for 'tax payers' everything looks like abuse until they benefit from the services for which they pay taxes. The favorite hobby of people whose identity is shaped by being a taxpayer is to complain about paying taxes.
If you ask pensioners if they should get higher pensions, they'll say YES. If you ask students if they should get more subsidies, they'll say YES. If you ask unemployed people if they should raise unemployment benefits, they'll say YES. If you ask people on minimum wage if they should raise the minimum wage, they'll say YES.
Everyone is quick to be very generous when it's from other peoples' money without accounting for the second order effects of those decisions, which is especially a big problem of the extended welfare state, since everyone pays taxes and so then everyone wants more and more subsidies so they can feel they're getting their money's worth out of the system, or else they feel cheated.
Personally, I want people on the high end of earnings (such as myself) to be taxed more so that a basic income scheme like this can be available for anybody who wants it. Charge me an extra $300/month and give it to some random 24 year old so that he can smoke weed and play his guitar. He'll get more use out of it than I will.
One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.
In Ireland their best chance of having their own place is emigration or waiting for their parents to die.
The extent of "anybody" is the detail that contains the devil.
Anybody who? Citizen? Asylum seeker? A person who obtained asylum or other forms of protection? A 'tolerated' person who was not deported? (Duldung in Germany.)
Europe is already politically ablaze, and one of the factors of this blaze is "too many foreigners from the Third World as recipients of welfare". If you introduce any basic income scheme that doesn't totally exclude non-citizens, you can expect the people smuggling gangs of Libya and Turkey to advertise it tomorrow as a next pull factor for their business.
Here's how it works: You take 1000 Euros in taxes from a productive German/West-EU citizen, and then redistribute that to 5 migrants giving them 200 Euro each, so you lose one angry voter but you gain 5 happy new ones.
The government is using your tax money to buy and replace your votes, this way the mainstream politicians cemented in the status quo parties, can keep making your life miserable with no accountability or repercussions for them and their careers, because your votes now become irrelevant.
And for good measure, in case the citizens vote for the so called "extremist" parties that promise to counter this obvious scam, you just slander them as nazis/$-FOBES/Putin-supporters with no proof, and form a 'cordon sanitaire' around them to take away their democratic representation, or just ban those parties altogether from elections so you can rule undisputed while masquerading as democracy.
Wow! You’re optimistic!
The data shows that having at least one patent on welfare is a strong predictor that a child will grow up to spend their life on welfare. Having both parents on welfare almost guarantees it.
Having single young men on welfare is one of the worst things a society can do for young men. They’d be much better off spending four years in compulsory service and learning to be useful.
I'm sure there will be plenty of people with low enough ambition that they'll just stay there, subsisting. But I don't doubt they'd be doing that in their mom's basement without basic income, so I imagine that society will survive just fine.
You know you CAN donate money to the government any time you want, right? Do you do that? Practice what you preach, don't hide behind "oh if only the government made me do it."
> One day, that kid will decide that living in a crap shared apartment is getting a bit old and he'll grow some ambition, get a real job, and eventually start earning enough to help sponsor the next round of deadbeats.
This is the critical problem you and others like you make: assuming that everyone is a reasonable, honest, ambitious person just like you are. Many people -- not all, but a big enough proportion to be a problem -- aren't. And when we make it possible to actually make "do drugs and play videogames all day" a viable lifestyle, there's loads of people who will take the government up on the offer. And remember, they can vote themselves UBI raises.
You know we can also advocate for higher taxes, given that it's astronomically more meaningful for everyone to give ten cents than for me to give a few dollars, right? Or did you think this was an insightful, valuable addition to the discussion that no one has ever suggested before? Is this the comment section of a local newspaper? Good god.
> there's loads of people who will take the government up on the offer.
Prove it. How many are loads? What, specifically, do you think UBI actually amounts to?
And you can ALSO voluntarily pay more in taxes while doing so. It's called leading by example. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates get called out on this and they do the same thing; "oh I'm just one person, my extra tax money is but a drop in the ocean, so why bother." If you and everyone else saying "tax me harder" actually put up, it might amount to something! And at least it would make people respect your position a bit more.
> Prove it. How many are loads?
Well let's see, anyone who's lived their entire life on welfare (we have families of multiple generations who have done so at this point) would qualify. So would all the homeless people more content to live on the street and do drugs than go to rehab.
> What, specifically, do you think UBI actually amounts to?
Enough for people with low ambition to live on! And their vote counts just as much as the productive members of society paying for them.
edit: found it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45590900#45591439
Lacks real courage. Not committed. Next!
Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll podcast) often talks about the practicalities of producing art.
In 1970's a (starving) artist worked part-time job (eg waiter), enabling them to focus on their craft most of the week.
Today, typical artist has to hustle, juggling 3 jobs, and can only focus once per week on their one day off work.
Further, "entry level" jobs are unpaid / underpaid. Such as internships at a museum or newspaper. Ditto teaching positions.
Consequently, only affluent persons are able to break into the creative disciplines (production of culture). Trust funds, nepotism, and other lottery winners.
--
I, for one, enthusiastically support heavily subsidizing both creative and caring work. All those "not-for-profit" gigs and unpaid labor. They're the grease that keeps society working. Despite not being tabulated in someone's payroll accounting system.
Art is seen as a worthwhile endeavour even if it can't necessarily support itself as a private endeavour. It's for the same reason galleries and museums are subsidised by the government.
Anyone can call themselves an artist but to receive this money you would have to have a portfolio of work that is approved by the application programme.
Ireland already has a competitive economy. There is more to a country than economics and that includes promoting things like art to foster a sense of identity and promote Ireland on a world stage.
Milton Friedman wouldn't approve and we're okay with that.
At a minimum you need a registered business, regular exhibitions or performances in your field, you have to register with the ministry of culture, and can't have a job. Contract work is allowed and encouraged. Also you are expected to apply when the government issues a Call For Creatives.
I think you get paid minimum wage as long as you continue fulfilling criteria.
I love the idea of having a list of "Registered Artists", where you get a basic income as long as you're prepared to Answer The Call of Your Country when needed.
"We need a nice cartoony figure for this public safety film! Find me some artists!"
"Here you go, boss"
"Naw, not those guys, have you got anything in a more Shel Silverstein-y kind of look? How about those ones?"
> Self-employed in culture can be given the right to pay social security contributions from the state budget.
https://e-uprava.gov.si/si/podrocja/izobrazevanje-kultura/za...
Because of the cost of living here, particularly in Dublin, there is no way that the Basic Income would provide me with anything like what most people here would consider a decent standard of living. (It would currently leave me with about €200 left over every month, after I pay just my rent. That's before any bills or groceries or anything.)
Plenty of people find a way to continue to make art that other people value, even if the cost of living continues to spiral ever upwards. This payment is simply a buffer to make making art a little easier, for a fraction of the many people who contribute to the social, cultural, and intellectual life of this country. For some it pays their rent or mortgage, for some it pays for childcare so they have time to work, for some it facilitates research or purchase of materials, for some it allows them a workspace outside their home.
It's not perfect, as no public arts funding is perfect but, to me, the kind of cheap cynicism displayed in this comment comes from a place of deep ignorance and bitterness.
‘2,000 creative workers’ would make this quite competitive, even if it’s only 20k USD/year that could easily enable people to be artists who wouldn’t make a career of it on their own.
Pulling a 80 hour workweeks at 24, supporting yourself while doing something else is not sustainable. Similarly someone supporting themselves as an artist + a kid is suddenly a very different situation.
20k USD/yr is life changing for some people down on their luck.
Expectation that you have portfolio does not strikes me as outrageous either.
Writing a few songs on a guitar from Facebook marketplace is cheap. Turning that into a live show is expensive and time consuming.
Writing some Irish language poems on your lunchbreaks is cheap. Doing public readings as an unknown poet is not.
Well done Ireland.
How is doing public reading of poetry not cheap?
I have friends who do standup comedy and they just show up at open mic nights and it doesn’t cost them anything. One is good enough that now the venues are paying him a little bit.
Ireland's economic statistics are so badly distorted by US companies routing money there that there is an entire subfield of economics dedicated to trying to figure out what Ireland's real economic state is, called "Leprechaun economics". A common adjustment made by economics researchers when studying the EU is to just subtract Ireland entirely.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun_economics
https://www.cfr.org/articles/leprechaun-adjusted-euro-area-g...
https://democracychallenged.com/2025/05/14/irelands-phantom-...
> The key to understanding this disconnect is a number few outside Ireland pay attention to: Modified Gross National Income, or GNI*. Unlike GDP, which counts all activity happening within Ireland’s borders, GNI* adjusts for the distortions caused by the huge presence of foreign multinationals. And the gap is enormous. In 2023, GNI* was just €291 billion — meaning more than €219 billion of Ireland’s reported output never truly flowed into the Irish economy at all.
When looking at Ireland's own economy without the influence of US tax transactions, the economy shrinks by nearly half.
There is no single indicator of wealth, measuring wealth requires a number of measures to provide context and contrast. The Irish economy is largely comparable to the Danish economy. I'd say the Danes sneak in just ahead of us but well behind Norway and Switzerland.
Ireland for example is wealthier than either the UK or France on a per capita basis. The GDP of Alabama and Bavaria, Germany per capita is largely the same, yet you would be insane to think Alabama was in anyway wealthier than Bavaria.
I stand by my comment.
The Irish economy is competitive and your little 'gotcha' that is a common trope across various shallow sub reddits, increasingly at an alarmingly peevish rate simply doesn't persuade me or others who are interested in understanding these things at a deeper level. There is a time and place for that discussion and it really isn't this thread.
Danish GDP per capita is about $71k nominal. According to the Irish Central Bank mGNI per capita is a fair bit less than that at around $65k.
https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-mip/measu...
However, that assumes the modified GNI measure is accurate. If you believe these numbers the Irish became nearly 40% wealthier between 2020 and 2023. That would be a truly unprecedented spike in wealth never before seen in history, and I don't think anyone believes it. It's much more likely that their attempts to subtract the distortion of American corporate success from the Irish numbers aren't successful. Tech firms did great during the COVID period whilst the average person... not so much.
But Friedman would have supported a broad basic-income scheme. We know this because he did support one. It was his proposal in 1962 of a “negative income tax” [0] (in Capitalism and Freedom) that gave rise to the movement to replace traditional social welfare programs with simple schemes that just give money to poor people. (This movement led to the Earned Income Tax Credit [1] in the United States.)
Friedman’s negative income tax is equivalent to the contemporary notion of a guaranteed basic income (but not to a universal basic income, as only people earning below some threshold would receive it). Like most economists, Friedman believed that people (even poor people) can typically make their own economic choices better than a government program can make those choices for them. (He was likewise not opposed to redistributive policies per se.) That was the root of his advocacy for market-based mechanisms of organizing the economy.
0. The idea dates to at least the 1940’s, but Friedman’s book is typically credited with popularizing it. See, e.g, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit
Well it has a competitive tax haven.
I don't give a shit about Milton Friedman. I do give a shit about wage earners in Ireland who are being forced to pay for an artist welfare program. Ireland has a competitive economy.
In other places (like Italy) there is.
A lot of societies have realized there is value in supporting art and culture. For thousands of years that activity was sponsored by monarchs, royalty and other nobility. Up until actually quite recently, most first world countries without monarchs and nobles also provided substantial support for the arts.
Basically outlandishly rich and gaudy benefactors have always had so much money they could employ OTHERS to do trivial pursuits. Now - the average taxpayer will bear that cost.
Did those shower curtains have a design? Did your sweater have a color and style? Probably so, but you never pay attention to how the world of "fine art" refracts into your daily life.
If the products were cheap, it's likely someone unpaid is responsible for the design. See, for example, the lawsuit against Zara over theft of ideas from small-time designers [1].
In any case, cheap Chinese brands do the same thing as Zara en masse (copying designs – note the "external suppliers" bit in its defense PR), and those products then end up in Walmart/on Amazon. The artists starve but you have your shower curtains and are happy with the price.
[1] https://www.grossmanllp.com/independent-artists-on-the-offen...
So ironic I guess
God knows Walmart couldn't exist with all this rampant welfare.
Maybe if workplace democracy was enforced upon Walmart it would be an entirely different entity, likely for the better too.
This is not the case.
Walmart doesn't have the lowest prices because they are efficient, yes conventional wisdom might dictate that but you are forgetting wholesalers exist from which conventional retailers buy from and the margin definitely tilts towards walmart but there was a time where they could easily compete against walmart and set their prices.
Now what's happening is that walmart has these special deals (in this case with pepsi) where pepsi would literally surveil all marts and see which is selling cheaper than walmart (FoodLion did that) and then what Pepsi did was cut off all the promotional money of FoodLion and increase their wholesaler prices.
Is this legal? Hell no. It's all completely illegal but the govt. stopped enforcing the law
Then when it was released by FTC, the whole document was almost redacted and Trump signed an executive order essentially trying to stop it from going out but some journalists dug/pressured for its release.
So walmart isn't the base because they are price competitive, hell-no. It's because they set the floor & have special deals with other companies to maintain that floor artificially.
Which actually leads to small retailers/chains shutting down because they can't compete on price and this essentially leads to a monopoly of walmart where it can dictate prices & increase them and the people are forced to STILL go to them.
And all of this while being immensely govt subsidized as you say too while paying their employees peanuts.
Actually Walmart when it was launched in germany was sued quite a lot for such practices that iirc they had to take an exit. No country wants a walmart because they know that they might use their american profits (which we discovered how come from shady practices themselves) and then use it to run marts at losses until the competition dies which is still immensely bad long term for the average consumer of whole world but particularly the americans in my opinion as all other govts are more protective of such industries for this good reason and walmart fails to measure up to those standards in other countries.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odhVF_xLIQA : We Uncovered the Scheme Keeping Grocery Prices High [More Perfect Union]
A lot of my points were heavily influenced by this video so I would recommend you to watch it to help understand more as well about what I am talking.
The deception of walmart actually fools a lot of people but the economical margin is actually quite low. It's the artifical floor that they set which gets unnoticed by many and this is why other retailers aren't able to compete, all of which is highly illegal but once again, the govt. stopped enforcing this law.
A) The government building an entire logistical supply and warehousing chain across the country for groceries to support food welfare. Cold food, meat, spoilage & waste, a bunch of federal jobs.
or
B) The government gives citizens a bit of money, which they then spend at existing warehouses (with existing logistical supply chains) to buy food. Some existing warehouses will accumulate larger shares of this money, as it has more customers.
The existing warehouses in example B are called grocery stores, like Walmart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQOXdtPBGXI
Seems like the it IS cheaper for the government to do it, odd how much better prices can be when you don't have to worry about making sure the fat cats stay fat.
edit: or maybe the communities served by walmart should build their own rain ponchos and bananas locally.
is the point of this conversation just to proclaim you don't like some guys? what is your claim here? what action do you desire the collective to take? what is the rule that society should follow?
why do you expect that rule to lead to a more prosperous, thriving society?
It is dismaying to find out how many American academicians take Marxism seriously - unless they stem from countries like Cuba that had the misfortune to actually let Marxist ideas rule them. It is mental fentanyl for certain kind of collectivist mind.
Give me Hayek and Buckley instead.
Binary thinking is analogous to quantizing an LLM to 2 bits (worse, actually). You're not going to get good results.
In practice? For example, nationalization of businesses and collectivization in rural areas, including suppression of "kulaks".
Maybe we should have a structure in place that taxes companies based on how many benefits their employees claim, say five times the total amount of money claimed.
We need more art that pushes boundaries and remains controversial. Instead, we favor the type of artist who attracts the most attention through their personality, whether because of their looks or a manufactured edgy image, while producing mundane, lowest-common-denominator work. We must support contemporary artists who move us forward rather than remaining stuck in popularity contests or constant nostalgia.
Under the current system, it is almost inevitable that influencers use their status to promote gambling ads and NFTs, ruining the lives of their fans. We need to break this cycle of rewarding increasingly poor behavior while making it harder for independent artists to earn a living.
Maybe they could sing up for say extra 20-50% tax which then get distributed.
> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.
Reminds me of the WPA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Art_Project
You will live long, but I will have more fun.
I worked in "culture" for a while when I was younger. 90% of it is just disguised unemployment benefits for those that consider it a dirty word barely good enough for the hoi polloi.
Your bio says:
> I'm not trolling. I actually want to know the answer, although my comment may feel less than diplomatic.
And so here is the real test. After reading the numerous responses to your question, do you get it?
that's the way you do it
You play the guitar on the MTV
That ain't workin',
that's the way you do it
Money for nothin'
and your chicks for free
We got to install microwave ovens,
custom kitchen delivery
We got to move these refrigerators,
we got to move these Color TVs...
Dire Straits, Money for Nothing, 1985
Guest artist: Sting
https://www.musixmatch.com/lyrics/Dire-Straits/Money-for-Not...
Did you have to be the party pooper? People were trying to indulge one of the most noble and timeless of pursuits: pissing on the poor! >(
I'm not in Ireland but it's the same everywhere. No one likes paying taxes.
Not saying that anything should be done about it. TBH I'd even like to have unemployment benefits be an optional insurance to reduce my taxes since I haven't gotten a cent out of it yet, but that's separate.
Just noting that artists aren't in some unique situation.
Nothing is stopping them from opening a company and giving themselves a fixed salary or doing some mix of salaried, freelance and under-table work.
There is already a "Merit based" system that supports the arts. It's called the private market.
My initial gut reaction was akin to many responses here but a post that detailed the implementation mitigates many concerns I'd have if I were an Irish citizen. As long as the system has some required 'buy-in' from applicants to prove they are working towards being an artist, and the distribution is random so it's not a guaranteed payout, and possibly the odds of being selected are driven by the number of applicants and so no one could do a cost-benefit analysis of submitting the 'buy-in' purely with hope of receiving a payout, then this seems to be a more fair way of supporting up and coming 'arts' than the government paying some already established artist for a mural or to design a park or to create a sculpture.
What do you mean?
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/money-and-tax/tax/inco...
Maybe it shouldn't be possible. Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.
Challenge
> I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.
^ That tax exemption _is_ from society. You may not agree with it, but clearly (at least some part of) "society" does.
I hope you find out before it's too late.
I think we as a society strive to make gp correct that money is representative of value, and rightfully so.
Anyone partaking in any activity that has value to others should be given money. That is literally what this basic income/tax break for artists is for. Someone thought producing art had value and pure capitalism wasn't correctly matching that value with monetary rewards.
There are lots of rich churches and church leaders out there. That's because they serve a human need, and those humans are willing to direct some of their finite resources towards that provider. (I'm talking about the collections plate if you didn't catch that.)
Now obviously money on its own is not value. It should represent value that you delivered to someone else in the past, and is helpful for getting whatever value your life needs. You mentioned philosophy --- that yoga retreat in the Andes isn't free, is it?
Now sometimes we muddy the waters, for example we permit lotteries where the winner takes home a good deal of money without providing any value to anyone. That debases money, and I think it has no part in society, but I'm unfortunately swimming against the tide on that one.
Then get divorced and discover your children don’t know who you are, and neither do you. And your wife took the dog too.
It’s an almost guaranteed way to eradicate this wildly stupid idea you have.
1. She gets better all the time, and might be super popular in the future 2. Many writings became relevant only long after the death of the author
No. If I was arguing that I'd have said that.
I'm observing that a lot of great writers had pretty miserable lives and I'm arguing that people should aim to live comfortably.
Sometimes artists suffer, but it's mostly a legend at this point. Plenty of great artists have perfectly fine lives. Look at like, any modern fantasy or sci fi author.
Broadly speaking, vernacular artists work for a fucking living; it’s rare there (like in most pursuits) to get super rich. We can’t all be David Baldacci or Danielle Steele.
NB: Thanks to Neal Stephenson for the best essay on this. He calls genre artists “Beowulf” artists.
Am noob. The phrase "folk art" never satisfied me. Is it really all that different? But I didn't have the gumption to learn more. Happily, the critics and philosophers did:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naïve_art
Thanks.
I have thoughts on how we're defining value as well, but others have covered those.
Has art improved in any measure?
Obviously not because of this income scheme and not complete disintegration, but Irish society is under extreme strain from housing pressures, rising living costs, and growing polarisation that is tearing at social cohesion.
It's frustrating to see funds allocated to this scheme when health, housing, transport, etc are all failing apart.
The income program provides €33,800,000 a year (2000 participants, €325 a week, 52 weeks in a year). Double that to account for cost of managing the program -- that seems too high to me, but I want to err on the side of caution for this analysis.
Some percentage of that money flows right back into the economy, of course.
Meanwhile, ignoring windfall corporate taxes, Ireland ran a €7.4 billion deficit in 2025. So the cost of the program, ignoring the money flowing back into the economy, is under half a percentage point of the budget? Those small amounts do add up, but I can't see this as relevant competition to the cost of shoring up health, housing, and transport. I don't have good estimates of how much those costs are, which is why I'm using the deficit as a relevant proxy, but still -- we ought to avoid the trap of seeing numbers which are large to you and me and forgetting that other numbers are larger by orders of magnitude. (There's a term for this which slips my mind.)
This is an eight-figure recurring commitment. It represents the total lifetime income tax contribution of well over 100 ordinary Irish workers per year. That's not an abstract, it's decades of PAYE from real people.
Public finance is about marginal allocation. Many high-impact projects sit in or below this band:
* St Christopher’s Hospice rebuild in Cavan – €13.5 MM
* Cork Educate Together Secondary School in Douglas – €45 MM
* NAS Ambulance Centre in New Ross – €0.5 MM
* CAMHS national annual opex budget – €180 MM
So these aren't symbolic sums. They're the difference between capacity and waiting lists.
“Money flows back into the economy” applies equally to nurses, SNAs, paramedics, construction workers, carers, etc. Recirculation is a property of all domestic public spending. It is not a defence of any specific programme.
Comparing this to the national deficit is also wrong. Almost every discrete programme looks small beside a multi-billion euro figure (whether it's the structural deficit or the €29 BN DSP budget). That does not mean it should escape scrutiny. Budget decisions are made at the margin. €60 MM for artist basic income competes with all these other €5-100m line items, not with the entire deficit.
Exponent blindness is real, but it is not relevant here. The question is:
Is this the highest-value use of €60-70 MM per year in a system with delayed scoliosis surgeries, SNA shortages, and overstretched mental health services?
I still think there’s value to encouraging the arts that isn’t purely financial, but I don’t think there’s an easy way to answer yes to your last question.
That 33 million could have built, let’s say, 66 houses and housed, let’s say, 264 people (66 families of four) for a generation before needing much in the way of maintenance.
But no, fuck the working poor, let’s fund artists.
Myopic.
I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds a bit like you've got a pre-existing opinion of the value of artists vs. however you're defining working poor.
What if they built those 66 houses? Is the complaint then, "what about the other working poor, why didn't they get houses"? Is there ever a point where it's like, ok to help some people given that some is more than none? Or is this all zero sum bullshit where if we can't help everyone we should help no one and just give Google back it's tax dollars?
Speaking of "myopic".
I'd love to see the breakdown on this, because in my experience with Government comms, if it was a straightforward economic win like an FDI or industrial announcement, they'd headline the figure. Unquantified phrases like "reduced reliance on other social welfare payments" are usually spin at best.
The net fiscal cost after accounting for increase tax revenue and social protection savings was €72 MM.
This was then offset to get to a positive net social gain by €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", as measured by a single survey question called the WELLBY test:
> “Overall, how satisfied are you with your life nowadays, where 0 is "not at all satisfied" and 10 is "completely satisfied"?
The €80 MM in "wellbeing gains", which is the sole decider of whether this pilot was a net positive or a huge net negative to society, is because on average, the 2,000 pilot scheme participants had a very approximate 0.7–1.1 increase in score when asked the above question during the pilot as compared to before the pilot. Each 1 point was deemed to be worth €15,340.
Definitely arguable the artistic output of Ireland is a better investment and more important than housing 66 non-productive families.
And we have wildly out of control inequality, inflated asset prices, and unaffordable housing, out the wazoo.
For example, Budget 2026 did not address the €307 million structural shortfall in university funding. Is basic income for artists a better allocation than third-level education? Or capital expenditure on cancer care? Or NAS opex?
I specifically disagree with this allocation of funds as we live in country filled with specific solvable structural and life-limiting problems that should be solved before artist wellbeing.
Ultimately that comes out of their pockets. Every tax benefit my neighbor gets simply shifts the tax burden more to me. Unless I am someone who doesn't pay taxes I guess. Do you pay taxes?
I pay alot of taxes. Probably more annually in the last decade than I made in total my first decade working.
Many of my peers spend alot of time agonizing about this stuff and spending both mental energy and significant capital in avoidance. I get a higher ROI focusing on more valuable activities. Besides, art is an economic engine. If you studied it, I’d guess those tax credits in Ireland generate multiples in domestic economic activity.
It seems dubious to claim that the tax break is a net positive for the country's economy. If art were so economically viable I suspect it would pay for itself and not need government incentives. I have no problem with the government paying a muralist to beautify some public space, but this is not that. This is subsidizing art that already has some economic value to someone, just not very much.
I feel like what is actually happening is subsidizing the buying of art, as the artist themselves can afford to charge a lower price due to the tax break. So you are encouraging the population to buy more art. And I guess that has some hypothetical returns in terms of life satisfaction and civility...? I think if they framed it this way, as a tax benefit available to anyone instead of exclusively to a select few, it might be more well received. I think of the mortgage interest tax break in the USA (which is actually almost completely negated at this point by the growing standard deduction) in the same way. It encourages people to settle down, maintain a job, and buy into society, so it helps build social stability and reduces violence.
That being said, wise governments recognize the value of some kind of support of the arts. One reason for the incredible esteem that Korean culture is held in within Asia is the Korean government's active support of its filmmaking, TV and music industry. This was also true in Renaissance Italy (courtesy of the Medici family) and in 17th Century France (courtesy of Louis XIV). It was even true of the CIA's active support of abstract expressionism. The payoff of such support is soft power, which is a very real force.
Through the kunstuitleen they leased and sold art to galleries and private homes. It was like a library for contemporary art which paid struggling artists and their families, while also exposing the public to more art.
To say that "no one wanted" is a massively overblown. Thousands of art pieces lived happily in many Dutch homes.
The Young British Artists (YBA) boom of the 80s was a product of the innovative teaching environment of Goldsmiths' college plus the drive of people like Damien Hirst, who organized the ground-breaking Freeze exhibition. The British Council did their best to capitalize on this.
Artists had to make a buch of art which was then given to the government. The state ended up with entire warehouses filled with crap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration
The work also included infrastructure projects, and often would create public art to decorate the infrastructure. That is why you'll see far more decorative work when looking at bridges from that era, for example.
As I've gone on to live in a few older cities, I have been surprised the number of times that I have (for example) come across a bridge or tunnel or whatnot and seen a big serif "WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION 1936" plaque on one side of it. It always feels like stepping into an alternate reality where history is more present and real.
It feels like a silly way to phrase it, but growing up where only a handful of buildings were older than 40 years, encountering history in a more banal form, like a simple bridge with some engravings, always feels more impactful than seeing some 500-year-old castle, monument or other touristy site.
Due to EU rules on state aid though, it's technically a quango and not part of the government despite being spun off of the then privatised national sugar company.
They also pay Ireland's contributions toward ESA, so the Irish flags you see printed on the side of Ariane rockets aren't a direct result of what the government is doing.
"Marxism" has just become thought-terminating shorthand for "thing I don't like".
You don't even have enough karma to downvote comments though..?
Artists couldn't apply for this, but were officially selected. The program was stopped in 2010, meaning no new recipients have been selected since. As far as I know, there's been no studies surrounding any measurable increase in artistic quality or artistic output.
It is of course easy to point out how deeply unfair such programs are on multiple levels. Unsurprisingly, many recipients have utilized loopholes in order to receive the grant despite having incomes and wealth well above the threshold.
Edit to clarify: Sweden still grants long-term stipends to various artists, sometimes up to a decade. What's described above is a guaranteed, life-long, basic income.
Scholarships and this kind of funds happen elsewhere and are based on merits. They end up funding a bunch of upper middle class's children because it turns out those children are well-equipped to perform higher on merits.
If you are too rich, then you wouldn't need this kind of fund.
If you are below upper middle class, then you would have a hard time competing with children from that class.
The upper middle class isn't rich enough to fund the kid but is good enough to accumulate a lot of merits.
While I'm sure there are some wholly self-made virtuosos on the list, it does give off an air of apparent nepotism.
I'd argue they are well equipped to give the appearance of merit, rather than performing higher on actual merit.
We can easily look at countries like Vietnam and Thailand where the merit is basically exam-based. Extremely difficult to cheat or "give the appearance".
The upper middle class's children perform very well. The top universities are full of these children. They are the top of the country. They are math/computer/science olympiads
If you are too rich, then the children are too spoiled. If you are too poor, then you don't have time and space to study nor access to private tutors.
[1] https://www.gamereactor.eu/report-20-of-steams-revenue-goes-...
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statlig_inkomstgaranti_f%C3%B6...
Another funny difference is the word "corporation" meaning the government in some cases. Like someone living in Belfast could go home from their corporation job to their corporation flat, if they lived in public housing and were employed by Stormont.
3 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45590900
4 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29977176
People have seemed critical of the presentation, scope, and goal of this program. (e.g. It's not "universal" basic income, the number of recipients is limited to 2,000, and why are artists being subsidized instead of essential workers?)
Now it seems that we'll get some real world answer to those questions/concerns.
Tbh though, that doesn't sound that special. Many countries subsidize artists.
Grants like this at a small scale is generally inconsequential to the country.
The quantity of arts isn't a good metrics.
I agree its pretty subjective and not the essiest thing to evaluate, but i think its certainly possible.
There are far more than 2,000 real, paying jobs for schoolteachers. And for grocery clerks. And for nurses. And for fire fighters. And for drivers of rubbish lorries. And for ...
Not so much for the folks who hope to be the next James Joyce or Louis le Brocquy.
But the obvious point is to help "artists" in Ireland. It's pretty normal for small nations to want to cultivate / protect / subsidize their arts / culture / language / whatever. The Irish gov't isn't trumpeting this program because they think it'll annoy Irish voters.
But I think people who benefit from this won’t be artists. But people who are good at making money off artsy projects.
I’d see much more value in investing in supply and demand. First, provide free studios with arts supplies, music instruments and so on. Next, force government agencies to hire local artists. Make municipalities have live music for local events and hire local musicians. Make gov agencies buy local art for decorations etc.
325 Euros/week sounds like basic rent & food & transportation. Not artsy projects with enough spare Euros for someone to skim serious money off from.
Providing "free" studios, supplies, instruments, etc. sounds like a scheme to give politicians more photo ops and bureaucrats more jobs. Why can't the artists just source exactly what they think they need from existing supply chains?
The normal welfare and employment system still applies to recipients, which is one of the more notable things about it.
Exactly. But it's a nice addition for „project-conscious“ crowd who can add one more income stream.
> Providing "free" studios, supplies, instruments, etc. sounds like a scheme to give politicians more photo ops and bureaucrats more jobs
Some libraries here started providing free studios with some basic instruments. I hear it was a hit with long wait times. It's awesome for artsy people who want to get together and jam with friends on saturday morning. Artsy people neighbours also love it that they don't have to hear said jams too :)
It's also great for kids who want to give it a shot. It's easier to come in and find some instruments than try to get some used stuff just to play.
I'm all for enabling people to do artsy stuff en-masse. The more people give it a shot, the better. Results don't matter, playing and creating something (no matter how crappy) is important.
IMO „mass-playing-with-art“ has much better ROI than handouts to let a selected crop of people pretend they're living off their art.
For the arts, free studios & such are both en-masse support, and a wider part of the talent funnel (vs. basic incomes).
Biggest problem that I see with basic incomes is in selecting who gets those. The article notes they'll pick randomly from 8,000 applicants - but there's judgement and selection somewhere. Otherwise, the scheme would implode politically after giving money to folks whose "art" was offensive graffiti, or appreciating expensive whiskey, or whatever.
Ordinary folks understand the whole "he who pays the piper" thing, and that "democracy" means the voters can choose to support the arts...or not.
Here it's already a problem for culture-ministry-financed projects. When some artists get funding, others don't... And then some people cry foul that it's because they crossed ways with some politician. Wether that's true or not, when arts funding and politics go together, it's a recipe for some sour FB posts.
But in a democracy, gov't-selected art has a failure mode more fundamental than mere political bias - the voters may decide they're paying too much for really crappy "art". That's what killed the public art program in the city I live in. In hindsight, the city's Art Committee was dominated by cutting-edge academics, big-ego art snobs, and well-intended persuadables.
Though the fountain they built in front of City Hall - abstract, drearily convoluted, generally ugly, horribly expensive, and usually broken - could be seen as appropriate and spot-on symbolic political art.
For that crowd, money for 3 years is not really interesting. It would ruin their existing (smaller or bigger) non-artsy careers. But their art, without significant mainstream changes, has no chance to cover a living. Even after focusing on it for 3 years.
I don't see a point to give such crowd a free ride either. They're fully capable society members. I don't see a difference between such artist getting a free ride vs me getting free money to ride my bicycle because I'd maybe do some cool shit if I had more time. Or maybe I should get a handout to do some opensource? Code is also art anyway.
As part time artist I see many problems with these schemes:
- Decoupled from people's actual appreciation of the art being done: I feel better when I know people voluntarily gave up their hard-earned money for what I do. - Monopoly-style "winner takes all". The people who benefit from this are the ones already in a position to ask for the benefit. - No one bites the hand that feeds then. That will form a body of "artists" subservient to the state.
The human problem is that no artist is willing to acknowledge that the public is not willing to spend money on their product.
And in hard economic times artists ought to turn to gleaning.
I have a hobby and I don't get compensated for it (quite the opposite). It's not making art, but if art were my calling I could quite easily see myself making it without any hope of monetary reward. There are plenty of people who have the same hobby as me and don't have a job -- they pursue it as is it's a job, though most are not paid either. I view that as some combination of privilege and laziness.
If there's any problem here it's that people don't have enough time to pursue hobbies. I only have enough time because I work from home (no time wasted commuting). Perhaps the government should focus on where we as a society waste people's time and energy such that they have none left over for hobbies.
Which sounds quite a bit like "we spent more on one type of welfare so we ended up spending less on a different type of welfare." Which, okay, good, but I don't think you can say you "recouped" anything.
I shouldn't hurt my potential income like this, but the link is even mentioned elsewhere itt.
You mean the study you're complaining about without having read? ... The one that's not even a Google search away, because it's literally linked on the page you're already on?
Not being snarky, just really surprised at the expectation of being spoonfed data that's already right in front of you, and the apparent willingness to complain about things that you haven't even glanced at.
Many people worked hard to do this study. I believe if you want to complain about their methodology then you should probably take the time to actually look at what it was first. Is that snark? Is it snark to ask for payment when people ask you to do research (however basic) for them?
> Ireland rolled out a permanent basic income scheme for the arts on Tuesday, pledging to pay 2,000 creative workers 325 euros ($387) per week following a trial that participants said eased financial strain and allowed them to spend more time on projects.
> The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle. O'Donovan said he would like to increase the number of recipients over time.
> Over 8,000 applicants applied for the 2,000 places in the pilot scheme.
> A report on the trial found it lowered the likelihood of artists experiencing enforced deprivation, and reduced their levels of anxiety and reliance on supplementary income.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Endowment_for_the_Art...
If you or your parents would like to sample a NSFW taste of your tax dollars at work, try this deep cut from Plaintiff Karen Finley: https://youtu.be/5gk6JCeGExo?si=FEqZtLlDiQDr0_XI
What criteria of artistic merit, cultural relevance, and common decency will Irish artists need to meet, in order to qualify for their basic income?
Unfortunately I don't remember the references off hand.
I do think there's value in a society encouraging the arts. I don't know what that best implementation is (if at all), though.
Likewise, with the NEA, since they offer grants, you'd need to qualify, apply, and justify your work, and probably renew on an annual basis.
Ireland selected the applicants randomly. I would suppose the 8,000 needed to meet qualifications first.
Ireland promises €325/week. The NEA grants seem to be on a project basis.
So neither of these programs are anything like UBI. UBI is the buzzword that sets us all atwitter with eager hopefulness and aspirations.
Artist grant programs are more like "publish or perish" research scholars. Most grant recipients view the application process as daunting and stressful, especially when it's not in their wheelhouse. "Grant writer" is a job title and a profession unto itself these days. Even charities and welfare organizations depend on grants themselves, so their recipients may be cut off if the grants don't come in on time and fill their budgets.
Ireland's program is like being on the dole. "Here's enough to subsist on while you do your art and try to establish yourself." After 3 years, they're cut off for 3 years, so the incentive exists to become self-sufficient in that time.
Subsidizing the arts has been the realm of religion, including Christianity, for thousands of years. Michelangelo and Bernini were among thousands and thousands of artists who were funded by the Church to create music, sculpture, architecture, images, and any other sacred object in their service. If socialism or communism are the first thing to spring to your mind, please rethink and consider that these philosophies sought to supplant the original collectives: religions; and the religious leaders and patrons were distributing wealth to every possible artisan and artist and composer and performer, in the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. Nobody knows the pain of shrinking churches like Ireland does, and so it really is incumbent on their secular government to pick up the tab here, lest the hands of artists become idle and restless.
>—Kurt Vonnegut
Personally I would have thought this money would have been better spent getting people on the margins the stability to retrain into in-demand skilled careers (e.g. single, unskilled parents training as electricians or plumbers). That feels like it would be a more durable, multi-generational benefit.
But again, this is just a grant programme.
Who said it is a UBI that this "rebuttal" even makes sense to appear here? The Irish government isn't calling it a UBI. The article doesn't call it a UBI. Even the FAQ for the program says it is not UBI:
>> Why this is not a Universal Basic Income
>> It is important to note that that the Basic Income for the Arts Pilot is not a Universal Basic Income. This is a sectoral intervention to support practicing artists and creative arts workers to focus on their creative practice. This policy is separate to the Universal Basic income as outlined in the Programme for Government.
https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a... - C-f for "universal"
This happens all the time. For example, in the UK there was a push for a "living wage" in the 2010s, which the government responded to by rebranding the minimum wage the "National Living Wage" and bumping it a little for over-25s.
This seems to be the same thing.
The website will be established shortly as https://ww2.u2bi.ie:212/ as soon as the registrars can correct the typos.
Think about the big picture: your salary is a cost for someone else. In the case of "basic income" is a cost for the tax payers. Who decides what benefits the tax payers? The state can't possibly do it, if not for a limited extent. Today we don't have a method more efficient than free market and free prices. Planned economies have historically failed. It may work for now, we all love arts; but tomorrow it will be the artisans (were is the boundary between art and crafts?), then maybe small businesses?
Each of this "tax exemptions" or subsidies eats the profits of someone else. Very rarely it's the richest luxuries that are taken away. Usually it's the middle-low class that doesn't receive exemptions and subsidies who's penalized. Ironically, that same class that most could consume art, crafts, and products in general. This way society spirals toward an halt.
If, once established, a thriving art scene generates value by attracting tourism, wealthy individuals who want to patronize the arts, etc then the artists would be able to charge enough to fund themselves and potentially do very well for themselves.
In that scenario we'd only need to fully subsidize artists for a short period of time, the subsidy law should have an expiry date.
That's literally how it works (at least in France). The government sponsors artists early on. Those who make it big don't need the gov sponsoring (and lose eligibility to it). Those who don't continue to receive the sponsoring.
Some artists take a very long time to pan out (some way after their death) so it makes little sense to cut funding to artists on an expiry date basis.
The subsidies and tax exemptions artists receive are small so if you are arguing for less state subsidy or its the least of the problems you should look at.
I am not convinced that this particular scheme is a good idea, but the alternative is not a free market.
> then maybe small businesses?
Big business already receives both explicit exemptions and defacto ones. Ireland is part of the mechanism that lets they structure their businesses in ways that avoid tax that are not available to small businesses.
> Planned economies have historically failed.
Very much false - the US war and post-war economy was very heavily planned, and was perhaps the most successful economy in history (precisely until it was gutted in the 70s/80s).
> best case scenario, create a proportional inflation
You give no reason to expect that this inflation will at best be proportional. It is perfectly possible (in fact likely) that the inflation will be less than proportional, because the price-setters (companies) are being taxed to give money to people on low incomes, who are economically speaking mostly consumers.
> Each of this "tax exemptions" or subsidies eats the profits of someone else. Very rarely it's the richest luxuries that are taken away.
Defeatist argument. It is obvious from history that taxation can be recouped from the rich, we just don't generally try to do that at the moment. We should start.
You talk about the US, but look at countries where the state is both heavy on taxes and inefficient. The point is that you delegate decisions on what do do and how to do it to very few people. They can be good, or be bad. Diversifying on an entire market is better.
The only thing that can save middle/low class consumers is the hope that the state won't increase taxes faster than we can save money. A culture of proper saving, of not falling for luxury items presented as necessary by our peers (or companies selling them), is the only way out. Focusing on what matters.
Most of us are instead living in the illusion that we can live a luxury life.
And you accuse me of cherry picking! I have to guess, since I don't know what you regard as "inefficient", but about half of the top-ten-GDP countries are high-tax western european economies. Normalising per capita just leaves oil countries and tax havens, so I'm not sure what metric to use.
> The only thing that can save middle/low class consumers is the hope that the state won't increase taxes faster than we can save money
Do you have any evidence from history to back this up? Saving has not done the lower/middle class very much good in the last 100 years. Is there any period you can point to where living standards improved because people were saving money faster than taxes increased? Taxes were very low in the 1800s - did it enable lower class people to save money?
is this true? Last I heard Ireland ran a surplus for the last 5 years or so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist_subsidy_(Netherlands). 1956-1987.
If they leave the country, then not so much.
It's even worse for techbros. All techbros ever read are self-help books and Nick Land's meth-fueled ramblings. Peter Thiel is a head honcho techbro because he was able to finish The Lord of the Rings.
The "intellectual" Americans will bring up Thomas Kinkade and how his work embodies the true nature of what American society should be all about. His pieces make them long for the good old past where non-whites knew their place and segregation was a godly law.
>The randomly selected applicants will receive the payments for three years, after which they would not be eligible for the next three-year cycle.
Is it really correct to call this UBI? It is hardly universal if it applies to only 2000 selected artists.
Seems more like a 3-year grant, similar to the art grants awarded by the national endowment for the arts.
Here is how to do it properly without waiting for the federal government and currency: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-voluntary-basi...
Proper basic income has never really been tried. It would have to be universal (for the entire population) and be enough to live on.
Most countries have non universal basic income in the form of benefits, state pensions, food stamps, and various social security insurance programs. One way or another people that can't or won't work still get enough to survive. Mostly, countries don't let their citizens starve. They mostly don't put them out on the streets. And if people get sick, generally hospitals/doctors will help. You won't necessarily get a very nice version of all that in most countries.
If you think of basic income like that, UBI is actually not that much of a departure from that status quo. It just establishes that as a bare minimum that everybody gets one way or another. The reason that the idea gets a lot of push back is that people have a lot of morals about having to earn stuff which then results in complex rules to qualify for things only if you are unable to earn a living. Which then turns into a lot of complex schemes to establish non universal income that comes into a variety of forms and shapes. But it adds up to the same result: everybody is taken care off.
A proper UBI would have to award it to anyone. That's what universal means. It would be a simplification of what we have now. If you are employed, you would get a chunk of income from UBI and the rest from your employer. Basically, you work to add income on top of your UBI and it's between you and your employer to sort out how much you work and how much you earn. If you get unemployed, you fall back to UBI. UBI would be untaxed. But if you work or earn income you pay taxes. Company earnings are taxed as well. And you pay VAT when you buy stuff. Those revenue streams are what already fund things today.
People think of UBI as extra cost but it could actually be a cost saving if done properly. There's a lot of bureaucracy that's no longer needed. You could still layer insurances and benefits on top of course. But that would be more optional. And you could incentivize people to work that are currently actively incentivized to not work (e.g. to not lose benefits or get penalized on their pensions).
People forget that the status quo is not free either and that it requires an enormous, convoluted bureaucracy that also costs money. UBI could end up being simpler and cheaper.
The hard part with UBI is balancing fairness and financial viability and implementing it in a way that isn't massively disruptive and complicated. You'd need to incentivize most people to still want to work while making the system generous enough that people can opt not to. That's not a solved problem and the key show stopper. Many people that work object against anyone getting anything for free. But if you consider the status quo, we already have a lot of people not working anyway. And we all pay for that already. That is actually a rather large percentage of people that are allowed to vote in many countries.
Mostly the moral arguments against UBI are what perpetuates the very inefficient and costly status quo. We just keep on making that harsher, more complicated, and more expensive. Effectively if you work, you are paying extra for all that inefficiency. Worse, you can work your ass off your whole life and still have to worry about having enough to retire, the affordability of housing, or being able to afford essential health care.
This is setting morals aside. Moral and ethics could be considered, but it's a far wider topic than a HN comment allows. An hint: nobody asks why a moral phenomenon came up in the first place. It must have had a function in society... maybe it still has today.
The point of work is to produce the things we need to live. Somebody's gotta grow the crops, drive the trucks, mop the floors, crunch the numbers, process the paperwork, write the code, whatever.
If you offer enough UBI for people to live without working... the work won't get done, and things we need won't get made.
We need people to work to produce the things they need to live. As long as this remains true, UBI can never happen. This fantasy of being able to live without working is out of touch with the cold hard reality.
New Zealand pays a pension to everyone over 65, whether or not they are working. No means testing and little political will to move the age upward. About 25% of those over 65 work, and the percentage is growing.
There are multiple reasons this could be true (eg, limited savings forcing work). The lack of means testing obviously saves money and shenanigans working out who is entitled, though the ‘universal’ nature limited how much a needy recipient can get.
I argue this is a test case on UBI.
not in this case though. as explained elsewhere, the artist is a dying career choice in ireland owing to economic reasons. no artist == drub society therefore the incompetent government intervenes the only way incompetence approves: free money. making the state function is much harder, and that’s not what these politicians signed up for. reducing electricity bill by 50% is a herculean task so how about jacking up taxes in one place and giving it back as free money in another? this is the modus operandi of the irish government.
I guess those people continuing to live (or live semi-well) would be fantasy to you. I'm not sure where society will go at that point.
The western world has sold a 'we are improving your life' story to get buy in from the masses. What do you propose? Other options used in the past were typically state provided bread and circuses and/or waging war.
There is more than enough work for everyone right now, and (outside of recessions) we will not run out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy
As more and more work is automated, the lifestyle level increases rather than decreases. Automation lets you produce more with the same amount of labor, increasing productivity and raising the standard of living. This is the sole reason we're not subsistence farmers right now.
War does not help the masses; it is purely destructive and one of the worst things you can do for the economy in the long run.
"Ray Dalio says America is developing a ‘dependency’ on the top 1% of workers, while the bottom 60% are struggling and unproductive"
https://fortune.com/2025/10/27/ray-dalio-america-dependeny-t...
"Millions of Americans Are Becoming Economically Invisible " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45374779
War is unproductive and a destructive use of resources but that doesn't change that it has historically be an outlet for unused labor. My point was that if we don't approach things intelligently/intentionally we can end up with crappy unwanted/unintentional outcomes.
"Ray Dalio says America is developing a ‘dependency’ on the top 1% of workers, while the bottom 60% are struggling and unproductive"
https://fortune.com/2025/10/27/ray-dalio-america-dependeny-t...
"Millions of Americans Are Becoming Economically Invisible " https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45374779
The U-6 rate is nearly twice the rate of the official figures.
The unemployment rate is measured by if someone has done an hour of paid work in the last week. Which is pretty easy to disqualify for if you do any gig economy work. And in a true slowdown the gig apps will probably stop being able to absorb people.
From reading their comments here, it seems to me that they are saying the theft occurs when labor is sold for a pittance in foreign markets so that things produced by said labor can be sold at a lower price (as compared to when more expensive labor is hired) in domestic markets. ("Basic income" = other people work as slaves in a factory somewhere so you can sit at home and "discover yourself.") The UBI would logically be an extension of that whereby the UBI program itself can only be funded by this disparity and therefore any beneficiary of such a program must be participating, however indirectly, in that theft. (Perhaps especially if one is a loud proponent of such a program.)
Ostensibly, from this perspective, one might consider whether the laborers should benefit more from their labor, rather than the consumers of products which are produced by said labor. It doesn't seem a particularly disagreeable or irrational perspective, at least on its face, though the seemingly disparaging mention of Marxism looks out of place given this perspective is rather Marxist.
Of course, whether one refers to that as "theft" is up to them; I'm just offering this alternate perspective since I didn't read it the way the parent did.
This person doesn't like taxation. Tough.
Edit:
Oh, and their reply.
If you're looking for a suggestion of how to gain such an understanding, I've certainly got one of those: put more effort into arguing in favor of perspectives you disagree with. Not only will it help you to understand the disagreeable point of view, it will additionally help you to strengthen your beliefs.
I appreciate the added context nonetheless.
My perspective is I'd rather keep my weed money to myself.
And that's exactly what I shall do. Want to fight about it?
Your plans to rob society even more than your ilk already do are selfish, idiotic, and will end in ruin--deservedly so.
I have spoken.
Regardless of whatever pretense you put on, you are in fact a member of a gang of thieves plotting to rob your next victim, just as Lysander Spooner explained in the 1800s:
Hint: We are now in the "raising of the spirits of the dead" phase of prophecy; the above being an example of what is meant by that phrase. You Are Here.The fact of the matter is, you're sticking a gun in somebody's face and demanding money, to be used for your own selfish purposes, or under some pretense of "the public good." That's a crime. You are a criminal.
Hear the words of a man much wiser and better than you:
The people you call "rational" are in fact slaves, just like you. That's what you were bred to be, for countless generations. Today you are capable of nothing else but blind, loyal obedience to your owners. You're a crab in a bucket, dragging any other crab back in who dares to attempt escape."Rationality" is not a concept your type is actually familiar with. You are incapable of any kind of independent life or thought. Every single "thought" you have was programmed into your mind. Real, actual freedom scares the shit out of you.
The only purpose of your meager existence is to make your owners more wealthy and powerful. When you no longer serve this purpose, you will be discarded--tossed into the fire and forgotten, like a burnt out cigarette stub. That's not long off now.
We get it, you don’t like paying taxes.
> The only purpose of your meager existence is to make your owners more wealthy and powerful.
Are these the wealthy and powerful pot smokers you’re talking about?
Well, let's say we get one or two more breakthroughs in AI, and it succeeds in automating literally every job that can be done at a computer. And then it starts investing heavily in robotics. This would render human labor as uncompetitive as horse labor is today.
At this point, you have two basic scenarios: something like UBI, or (if the machines are less cooperative) John Conner.
This actually seems at least as likely these days as a warmed over libertarian argument that, "Taxes are really just slavery!"
Well, there is a third basic scenario; where the billionaires who control the AI use it to help get rid of all the poors once they're no longer necessary.
If that were true though, we'd probably see them all frantically scrambling to control AI, buying private islands and blackmail networks, getting heavily involved in pandemic preparedness programs, genetic engineering, virus research, instigating massive wars, buying up all the media and politicians, creating massive surveillance programs and building deep underground bunkers. Stuff like that.
So, nothing to worry about.
The language of Shakespeare and Seuss deserves better than this mindlessness. It is not robbery because it is not unlawful.
I think a mix is fine. But there are disadvantages if you weigh too heavily on the latter two. In Europe, there's already quite a lot of government subsidies for art. Try finding a British or French movie that doesn't open by announcing its connection with some government subsidy program. While I quite like quite a lot of what Europe produces (especially cinema), in the long run I suspect it won't be sustainable. Whereas the free(r) market approach of e.g. the US and Japan will end up ahead.
Much better than all three choices combined if you ask me.
That came as a big relief as he always struggled to make money, but it's still not a thing that a lot of people get.
The cost benefit analysis includes a euro value to attribute to better wellbeing, using the WELLBY framework and apply £13,000 per WELLBY
I think the amount is something that can be disputed, but the underlying idea is, IMO, a sound one. Similar to the "unconditional basic income" idea - again, the amount can be contemplated, but the idea is sound, even more so as there are more and more superrich ignoring regular laws or buying legislation in a democracy. That means the old model simply does not work. Something has to change - which path to pick can be debated, but something has to be done.
Why would you want to randomly select here?
Random isn't a bad way of doing it in any case though.
In most of the world, rich people are rich because they are good at exploiting government funds. It's a lifestyle.
Maybe we have a different look on basic income, for me it's like unemployment money with less steps and less overhead (less bureaucrats). I also dont know why you pull in marxism, but those systems normally starve because of bureaucrats (hello germany) where you have to fill out 10 papers to create one praline, and NO i dont say germany is "marxist", but they are really good at always taking the worst from both sides.
For giggles, lets say every work can be done by robots, every service by ai and energy is free (dyson sphere or whatever you want), who's left to spend money and for what? And tadaa StarTrek ;)
If all work is done by robots we have much bigger challenges than who spends money. We need to consider how to counter dynamics and incentives that might favor having fewer humans dependent on the system, for example. We also need to consider how we avoid either humans losing control entirely or human control being massively centralized to a small group of people running everything.
Continue to avoid exploring obvious solutions because certain words have been made into epithets, or failed previously because they were solving future (now imminent) problems?
If we have a system depending on trading our labor for money to pay for stuff, and the value of our labor goes to zero, we need a different system.
We can't paper over that fundamental crack by giving governments even more power to decide what every person "needs" and send out resources accordingly.
There are so many problems in that system. How do we actually decide prices when every consumer has the same base level of money to spend? How does the government decide what we all need or deserve? How do we avoid the corruption taking over that massive power granted to dole out resources? Are we just living in a feudal state again? Does the government need to control the means of production to keep such a system stable?
I'm also not sure why you assume I haven't read up on this topic. We may disagree, but its extremely dismissive to assume your view is right and I must simply be uninformed.
The idea is not new, only the rhetoric.
Whereas in this Irish program, it is less money for more people chosen by lottery. The only editorial control is who is qualified to enter the lottery. It is also subsidizing the artist and not the art work, with artists working in cheap mediums receiving the same as artists dealing with high costs. So you are still going to need a grant or commission if you work in monumental bronze.
France has had a similar scheme for a long time (“intermittent du spectacle”).
It is not perfect but does a great job at sustaining artists who work hard to live from their art.
So it's permanent, but the recipients don't get it permanently?
So to answer your question: Yes, it's permanent (or as permanent as any gov't program can be), but the recipients don't get the money for an indefinite span of time (permanently).
Other industries don't move as fast but a 3 year layoff in tech could be a career death sentence.
No, they're allowed to have other work or earn money from their art. The intent is to subsidize their income, not be their exclusive income for those three years.
Budgets are limited so they can't give to everyone all the time. They give each batch of artists money for 3 years and then move to the next batch. Interesting to see if there's a chance they start looping over.
Also HN: UBI is a scam and no one will want to contribute to society.
Maybe UBI works for some recipients when it's clearly time-limited and the recipients have a clear way to building a stable income, but are bottlenecked on time and capital. I think artists are a good fit for such a program.
All the government-subsidized art that I've come across is straight up awful, and nobody ever actually cares for it. Typically it's weird abstract stuff.
By these standards, should I be paid an income from your tax money for my 5 side-projects on GitHub that nobody uses?
If we applied the rule of "it has to be good to be worth it" and money is the main indicator for "good", then what about the myriad products and services that are low quality / terrible, yet make tons of money because they can afford to shove marketing down everyone's throats and thus stay relevant?
Most popular music is downright awful to me. Do I want to take their money away because I don't think they deserve it? No. On the other side of that coin I'd like to see some kind of counter balance. How many artists were considered awful until they suddenly became the biggest deal ever? Often posthumously.
This tiny sliver of funding for some people you may not like won't take anything away from you.
The early internet was so great because it was full of weird things. We've lost ALL of it, due to commercialisation. We stand to lose even more if we don't do something to fund the people who dare to be weird.
This goes right back to the thing Bezos said about how we need to become interplanetary so we can inhabit the galaxy, because if we inhabit the galaxy we could have a thousand Mozarts. I think we could already have a thousand Mozarts if they weren't busy slaving away in Amazon's warehouses.
Once there's a trillion humans in the galaxy and they're still all slaving away in warehouses, we still won't have any Mozarts.
Not everything can or should be quantified by money and economics.
For a start, it's a lottery. 2000 randomers who call themselves artists will get no-questions-asked income regardless of their skill or importance as artists. We have people who are full time carers for family members who get less money in their allowance, and it's means-tested.
So you can be a millionaire heir / heiress, independently wealthy and still be eligible for it. One artist on Twitter bragged about getting it, and has been using the "extra money" to go on long holidays. It's basically free world travel for her.
Also, what is an artist? There's one guy on twitter who gets this income and really, he just seems to take bad semi pornographic photos. Like the world really needs more of that.
Another lady my wife knows personally is a terrible artist, never had any talent and doesn't make money. No sense of colour, no line skills, just paints awful blobs in awful colours. She's 100% in favour of this scheme and won't shut up about it on twitter.
My wife has been struggling to make an income from her art for decades, but has created a small business around it, wedding stationery, other print fits. Guess what? She probably doesn't qualify as "an artist" she "runs a small print business". She also thinks that the government could do a lot of practically things to make life easier for artists but it's easier to take your budget and just give it to random artists. No effort, no real benefit. It's laziness and incompetence.
I know exactly one "real" artist whose paintings will genuinely be hanging on walls for hundreds of years. He has no business around his art, he literally paints and holds exhibitions to sell his work. His name is famous in art circles and you can instantly recognise his style whenever you see it. His work is truly amazing. He has a wife and two kids and struggles sometimes. The long gaps between exhibitions, the worry that an exhibition won't go well. Anxiety, depression. Did he get this magic lottery? Did he fuck.
For a start, it's a lottery. 2000 people who meet very broad but generally fair eligibility criteria (https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...) will get no-questions-asked income regardless of their skill or importance as artists, these being qualities that are both highly subjective and not fixed in time.
So you can be anyone – rich, poor, or something in between – and still be eligible for it. All you have to do is meet the criteria, which were created in consultation with artists.
Also, what is an artist? Thankfully that's not for me to say, because I have quite a narrow view of what art is, and that view would certainly exclude some people who were successful in the pilot.
My partner has been struggling to make an income from her art for over a decade. As she is a working artist under the pilot definition, she qualifies for the lottery even though she runs a small business (to be precise, she's self-employed – making and selling her art full time. There is a reasonable chance that you have seen it). She also thinks that the government could take many other practical steps steps to make life easier for artists, but that taking a small amount of money and giving it to random artists has a huge potential upside: practically no effort, many benefits.
I know several artists whose paintings will genuinely be hanging on walls for hundreds of years. Or prints. Or photographs. Most make ends meet, and one or two are comfortable. Their work ranges from truly amazing to decidedly mediocre (in my opinion). Did any of them get this magic lottery? Yes, some did. Others (including my partner) did not.
But in my view, arts should be funded by people in private. Any spare resources the government can muster up should be invested in improving the security and quality of life for its people. If no one ever goes hungry, and their medical needs are met swiftly, and justice is swift and accessible to all. then I can see the appeal in funding arts. But even then, sciences can meaningfully and in the long-term improve humans' lives.
I don't even know if the arts would benefit from this. Will the government arbitrate whose art is better? Private persons would, they won't fund a terrible artist. and from what I know about artists, the rejection and failure is instrumental to revelations and breakthroughs in their art. Without that, will the state be funding or facilitating mediocrity in art?
Imagine if this was for entrepreneurs. If the government will provide income so long as you're starting businesses. If you didn't have much to begin with, it might prevent you from giving up businesses that are failing, hold on to that restaurant years after it's failed because you like the vibe, and your needs are met. But if you'll eventually be in danger of running out of money to support yourself, you'll be forced to shut doors early, learn lessons and move on to something better.
I'm just making a case against dreams being kept alive artificially on life-support. And of the consequence of not having adversity when needed. I don't know if it's true, but I remember an analogy of artificial biospheres failing to grow trees and plants early on, because they didn't simulate wind. the trees needed the resistance, push and adversity of wind to thrive.
But I'll digress, I'm not saying Ireland did wrong, just putting my thoughts on the subject out there. They know what they're doing, I'm sure. And this is sounding too much like damn linkedin post, and on HN too of all places, talking about entrepreneurship, shame on me! :)
There's a huge group of people in western countries that has received unconditional basic income for decades, without any requirements. No questions asked, no documents required, no forced work. They could basically use that free money to flourish and pursue whatever creative activity they could imagine, without fear of economic downsides.
And we know the results already. We see it in our cities daily. But as a society, we have decided not to talk about it so we are not called racists or far right. Instead, we keep ignoring this massive group with an equivalent of basic income and keep pretending we still require experiments on its effects.
But yeah, let's test a few dozen Irish artists and keep pretending everyone needs to work for a living.
I already explained why I don't want to say it aloud in this context. Your guess is as good as anyone's.
> ... as a society, we have decided not to talk about it so we are not called racists or far right.
Did anyone take a note of what kind of output the artists produced? Was any of it any good?
This was later one of the motivations to cancel the program.
What you're talking about is paying people to produce 'art' by the unit.
This scheme is about paying credentialed artists so they can breath a little bit. No need to supply slop.
BTW credentialism - good or bad? It certainly seems to me that the idea of credentials has crept from medicine, law and engineering into formerly freer and more bohemian territories. An idea of a perepiska for singers or actors would be considered absurd by most people in history. But once money transfers are in place, bureaucracy inevitably follows.
How long is string?
Some accreditations are strong. Others are nearly useless.
Reputation is easily hacked these days. Letters of recommendation don't mean what they used to. Something needs to fill that space - especially when you're filtering down to 2,000 applicants in a country of 5 million people.
Sure, there's a lot of dodgy doctors and lawyers out there. No shortage whatsoever, despite the efforts towards strict credentials. But I'd still rather have someone with a medical degree fixing my broken leg than a random chirurgeon.
The latter is quite a bit closer to the old feudal system of professional guilds, which were mostly concerned with defending the interests of their own members.
Still a good idea though.
I absolutely do not expect sillycon valley libertarians to understand or appreciate any of this so probably a good idea to avoid the comment section here...
the irish government is adept at misplaced priorities, (very) short-term thinking, pursuers of feel-good vibes, basically everything besides running a state. incompetence here has bred the need for more and varied welfare programs just so we can have a variety of careers that cater to the needs of life. of course, necessity of the arts is undisputed. but can the artist make a career here when the money you make from a show, including tips, can’t pay your utility bills? when your income can’t afford you decent accommodation?
</rant>
Get rid of it. State sanctioned art is is probably worse than no art.
It's despicable, they're as much as an insider threat as Hungary.
"Permanent", I don't think that word means what you think it means.
Overall It's a bit sad going to American bars and not hearing the whole bar singing along to the musician up on stage. Amercia's culture I feel is way more focused on celebrity then musicianship.
Nashville has plenty in the evenings, and then you can find hot spots in some cities. I've seen regular buskers in Boston, Seattle, Sarasota, and Boulder - usually in pedestrianized touristy quarters.
In Dublin's best music venues, nobody is singing along because it's brand new material from brand new artists. If you're singing along to well known songs in Temple Bar then I'm afraid you're missing some of the best music the city has to offer, in venues like Whelan's, Workmans, Sin É, The Grand Social etc.
What's far worse is hearing a sing along in the original release. Listen to Strumpella's "Spirits"-- those are paid crises singers!
Edit: clarification
The looks were strange and from women in their 20s as I walked around Dublin. Im not much to look at yet do not receive such looks or rude behavior (one purposely did not hold the bathroom door at starbucks as I waited my turn 25 feet away waiting to get in rather she purposely pushed the door to close) at home in the DC region or my travels throughout the US and Europe. Another American mentioned a similar experience too. My friend traveling with me he was not wearing a hat & did not experience any such thing.
The same is true for a lot of open source and indie software. I have been running a free AI companion bot on Telegram for months and the operating cost (5/month server) comes entirely out of pocket. The users get genuine value from it but there is no revenue model that does not compromise the experience. If I add ads or charge money, the thing that makes it feel like talking to a friend (no transactional friction) disappears.
Ireland is essentially saying: some things are worth publicly funding because the market undersupplies them. That is a healthier framing than trying to force everything into a subscription box.