Stimulating Art

This economy sucks. Nothing too shocking about that right? People are losing their homes, can't afford to go to the doctor -- many are having trouble getting money for food.

Everyone's tightening their belts. (Well, almost everyone.) So, the Republicans want you to be furious when at this time of crises, Obama's proposed stimulus plan includes fifty million dollars for the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA). Fifty Million!

"Degenerate Art" (Entartete Kunst) was a Nazi exhibition in Munich in 1937, part of a PR campaign against modernism.

Sounds like a lot of money. But wait, the stimulus package is close to 1 trillion dollars. Fifty million is about 1/16,000th of that. And out of all the arts philanthropy in the U.S., the NEA represents less than one percent.

Ideally, every dollar the U.S. spends on stimulus will multiply -- through job creation, or people going out and buying something with that money, etc. The last stimulus package (the one last year when we all got those checks from the IRS) didn't work because people mostly spent that money paying off bills, or on foreign luxuries (like stinky cheese and champagne), instead of spending it on legitimate things (like booze and porno made right here in the USA).

So, in econo-jargon-terms, tax cuts won't work because they have no multiplier effect.

You know what does have a multiplier effect? The National Endowment for the Arts. During the 1970's and 80's, the NEA learned that every dollar they gave in grants typically generated seven to eight times more money in matching grants!

The NEA remains the largest annual funder of the arts nationwide, despite the fact that it represents less than 1 percent of the total arts philanthropy in the U.S. In fact, the Italian government spends more money on Opera houses than the entire NEA spends in a year.

It would seem that if any government program is working, it's the NEA.

More precisely, it stimulates the economy -- which is the whole point of the package. So why is the $50 million in NEA funding one of the major points of attack for Republicans against Obama's stimulus plan? Politics. I won't go so far to say that conservatives want the stimulus to fail, but attacking the NEA has always been a quick way to score points with the conservative base. (E.g., People who still hold a grudge about "Piss Christ".)

The NEA's motto is, "A great nation deserves great art". We shouldn't have to sacrifice one for the other.

(WATCH) Toby Fights for the NEA (Part 1)
(WATCH) Toby Fights for the NEA (Part 2)
(WATCH) Toby Fights for the NEA (Part 3)

(NEA Figures from: http://arts.endow.gov/pub/how.pdf)

UPDATE: Paul Krugman has commented again on the stimulus: Bad Faith Economics