Poor and Homelessness

[MikeF]

There is a difference between a musician and an artist. Lots of people can play a musical instrument well, but very few of them are artists. Lots of people can make a living entertaining other people, but very few of them are artists. You may not understand or recognize the difference, but the difference exists. And there are people that can understand and recognize it. And it's not something one can easily fake, any more then one can fake being a doctor before a committee of doctors.
There is an endless need for artists in any society. And "demand" isn't especially relevant since artists work in advance of any known demand. They define "demand".
You should, however, be given the opportunity to develop it to the best result. Because the last thing we want to do is crush the next budding Shakespeare or Picasso before he writes a word or paints a stroke because we thought we needed him flipping burgers to serve the greed of some corporate conglomerate and a bunch of already overweight citizens.

I say greatness will reveal itself. A potential Mozart, Monet, or Shakespeare will not find themselves confined to a life flipping burgers. I see your portrayal as a gross exaggeration.

I surmise your artist welfare program would only prolong the delay of the mediocre from moving on to a more sustainable career path.

 

[PureX]

I say greatness will reveal itself. A potential Mozart, Monet, or Shakespeare will not find themselves confined to a life flipping burgers. I see your portrayal as a gross exaggeration.

Greatness needs to be realized, and that takes encouragement, time, and effort. Time and effort that one does not have when forced to flip burgers for giant conglomerates because their profit margins determine all social value.

I surmise your artist welfare program would only prolong the delay of the mediocre from moving on to a more sustainable career path.

Of course it would. That's the whole point. If we knew who would achieve greatness we could weed out the mediocrity right away. How wonderfully efficient. But we can't. That's part of the cost of greatness. And even partly what defines it. We recognize greatness because of the sea of mediocrity that it rises above. It's part-n-parcel.

And people need to be able to try things that they're not good at to help them discover what they are good at. But this means we need a society that is based on people, instead of profits. And that's a society that is very hard for most Americans to grasp. They can't even imagine it.

 

[MikeF]

@PureX

Here is one of my paintings. Would I qualify for your subsidy program?

[GALLERY=media, 9801]Golden Field And Fence by MikeF posted Oct 29, 2022 at 2:59 PM[/GALLERY]

 

[Valjean]

So you are fine with Agnetha, Anni, Bjorn and Benny getting $1,000,000,000 to go on tour, and your average Karin or Anna getting $100 at a local gig?
Ok.
Bump up corporate tax rates and you lose your companies. I don't think anyone should pay more than one third of their income in taxes.

And yet, during the fifties and sixties, corporate taxes were as much as 91%, and both industry and the people were thriving.

Until recently tax rates were less than ten percent. Slug a large company 50% company tax and they will simply move over the border.

Taxes were low, yet and the middle class was struggling and poverty was growing. Corporate pressure on politicians -- and campaign contributions -- led to deregulation, allowing consolidation and outsourcing, resulting in job losses and wage stagnation.
High corporate taxes didn't hurt the corporations, but they did allow decent wages, good social services and infrastructure, and a thriving middle class, whose high taxes enabled it to thrive.
Higher taxes produce general prosperity and security.

 

[Valjean]

Where to start?
Lenin and Stalin
Mao
Ho Chi Minh
Pol Pot
Honeker
Castro

Over one hundred million dead, and who nations destroyed for generations.

Talking about the USSR, and Maoist China.[

These don't sound like decentralized, classless, worker-controlled, coöperative systems to me. With the possible exception of Cuba, it doesn't sound like everyone was getting their needs met. So... Communist? -- not even socialist.
Calling your country communist, or socialist, or democratic doesn't make it so.

They were repressive, totalitarian dictatorships, controlled by a powerful ruling class.
In communism the workers, themselves, run things, and there is no centralized, coercive ruling class. In socialism there is security, with everyone at least getting their needs met, and social mobility for those who want more.
The countries with the highest happiness, freedom and prosperity indices today are those with the most 'socialist' public policies.

 

[Valjean]

You claimed competition breeds animus, and that might be true at times, but it's not why we have competition - it's to improve our goods and services, and provide incentives for hard or creative effort. No competition = stagnation.

Most competition in the US today is more like predation, with large corporations buying up competitors and the remaining companies unable to compete with these giants and going out of business. This leaves the mega-corporations with little incentive to innovate, modernize, or even maintain infrastructure or good services.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

That is the risk one takes if they want to make a living in the arts. The number of people who can become accomplished as a musician for example, is large. There just isn't a need or demand for all those who can become accomplished at their instrument to make a living at it. Just because you want to do a particular thing in life doesn't mean you get to do it as a career. It will have to become a hobby.

Yeah, I see what constitutes "having the results" to be so subjective as to be meaningless. If the artist is good enough and the approach or content unique enough, they will be more than capable of supporting themselves. If they can't, then they will simply have to be content to be a hobbyist.

I would have to know more about how you view the human experience, I think, to understand your side of the argument.

I am actually befuddled to a great extent, here in on this forum, when I see a left leaning Christian, like PureX, arguing with what seems like a right-leaning individual with 'none' as their religion, about how concrete the material and social world is. Religion typically says material conditions are more immutable than positions nearer to atheism. So what is your basis sir, of seeming to describe the material world as not being able to be organized better, to serve a more generally hedonic experience

I myself could have got in a record deal as lead guitarist, and my dad could have as well. Neither of us wanted to go quit our jobs. I guess I would argue it was too much of a risk, materially. But the trade-off is that our entire culture becomes lamer when artists end up stuck in menial labor. And as for what 'risk' is, I would argue that it is generally a product of social construction. Western culture likes the drama of 'reaching for hope' against the odds. In our culture, you earn a place via hope rather than utility. Art is subjective, but it can have actual utility in culture, depending on preclusions of social design.

 

[PruePhillip]

Most competition in the US today is more like predation, with large corporations buying up competitors and the remaining companies unable to compete with these giants and going out of business. This leaves the mega-corporations with little incentive to innovate, modernize, or even maintain infrastructure or good services.

Sure, and that's what happens. You get a competitive advantage... BUT... there's the law (anti-trust) and there's people undermining you.
Anti-trust was Bell, Standard Oil and Microsoft.
Undermining includes Tesla vs standard internal combustion engine car companies, or the digital camera bypassing Eastman Kodak.

Companies that decided to be kinder, caring and woke won't last long. When the advantage is to the worker you wind up in a situation where the worker himself will suffer, ie the Soviet Union's under-employment where the workers have an easy life, long lunch breaks, lifetime employment etc.. In the end the workers standard of living dropped, there were limited goods, prices were high and you queued for everything.

 

[Valjean]

Sure, and that's what happens. You get a competitive advantage... BUT... there's the law (anti-trust) and there's people undermining you.
Anti-trust was Bell, Standard Oil and Microsoft.
Undermining includes Tesla vs standard internal combustion engine car companies, or the digital camera bypassing Eastman Kodak.

The Sherman Antitrust Act was gutted during the Reagan administration, and many other checks on corporate power followed. Unions were undermined as restraints of trade. Media were consolidated. We now have greater consolidation of corporate power than ever before. Only a handful of Monopolies control media, banking and diverse businesses. Workers are disempowered, government is captured, elections bought, and a unified corporate media tells everyone things are better and more prosperous than ever.

The only force powerful enough to curb monopoly and trans-national corporate hegemony is government -- and it's been captured, as well as defamed in the public eye as "the problem, not the solution."

Companies that decided to be kinder, caring and woke won't last long. When the advantage is to the worker you wind up in a situation where the worker himself will suffer, ie the Soviet Union's under-employment where the workers have an easy life, long lunch breaks, lifetime employment etc.. In the end the workers standard of living dropped, there were limited goods, prices were high and you queued for everything.

But when the workers were empowered in the non-totalitarian US, we got a golden age, where both business and labor thrived (despite grumbling on the business end). Living standards went up, wages were good, income inequality was low (unless you were black, of course) the middle class thrived, and beggars and tent cities were nowhere to be seen.

 

[PruePhillip]

The Sherman Antitrust Act was gutted during the Reagan administration, and many other checks on corporate power followed. Unions were undermined as restraints of trade. Media were consolidated. We now have greater consolidation of corporate power than ever before. Only a handful of Monopolies control media, banking and diverse businesses. Workers are disempowered, government is captured, elections bought, and a unified corporate media tells everyone things are better and more prosperous than ever.

The only force powerful enough to curb monopoly and trans-national corporate hegemony is government -- and it's been captured, as well as defamed in the public eye as "the problem, not the solution."
But when the workers were empowered in the non-totalitarian US, we got a golden age, where both business and labor thrived (despite grumbling on the business end). Living standards went up, wages were good, income inequality was low (unless you were black, of course) the middle class thrived, and beggars and tent cities were nowhere to be seen.

Sure, there's many elements here to accept. I am a firm believer in business and trade unions. You need both.
If legislation can be 'gutted' by a party or person you have the machinery to restore that. That's what elections are about.

 

[PureX]

Sure, there's many elements here to accept. I am a firm believer in business and trade unions. You need both.
If legislation can be 'gutted' by a party or person you have the machinery to restore that. That's what elections are about.

Not when they are rigged by gerrymandering, by an onslaught of media lies paid for by corporate lobbyists to put their toadies in office, and not by a public that can't tell reason from malicious fantasy.

 

[PureX]

I say greatness will reveal itself. A potential Mozart, Monet, or Shakespeare will not find themselves confined to a life flipping burgers. I see your portrayal as a gross exaggeration.

Back here in the real world, I shudder to think how many such visionaries went completely unrealized because they never had a chance to discover their own abilities, let alone to develop them. An enormous waste of human potential just because we valued profits above all else. Even as the super-rich people we create with this ideal do nothing with their wealth but squander it on ego-centic baubles and trinkets. So the whole world can see how important they think they are.

Are there any people LESS deserving of all that wealth and power?

 

[PureX]

@PureX

Here is one of my paintings. Would I qualify for your subsidy program?

[GALLERY=media, 9801]Golden Field And Fence by MikeF posted Oct 29, 2022 at 2:59 PM[/GALLERY]

If I were on the committee, you would need to show a body of work, not just one. You would need to write something about what your doing in this body of work, and why. And you would need to articulate a need for help. For example, you are working a job, making a living, and doing OK, but you are having to work with acrylics because you can't afford oil paints. So you are seeking a grant that would cover the cost of changing to oil paints.

Or maybe you're doing fine making a living and making art, but you need help getting your work seen.

Maybe you're wanting to go in a new direction and need to buy a different set of tools to do that.

Real artists have real needs. And as a society we should support them, because WE NEED THEM. And really, it costs very little compared to the money we spend as a nation of stuff that we don't need. Just because it's politically expedient.

 

[MikeF]

Back here in the real world, I shudder to think how many such visionaries went completely unrealized because they never had a chance to discover their own abilities, let alone to develop them. An enormous waste of human potential just because we valued profits above all else. Even as the super-rich people we create with this ideal do nothing with their wealth but squander it on ego-centic baubles and trinkets. So the whole world can see how important they think they are.

Are there any people LESS deserving of all that wealth and power?

I am strongly in favor of a society in which each individual can grow to their full potential. That being said, living requires effort; it takes work. Food and shelter do not magically occur. Every member of society can't devote all their work hours expressing themselves in an art form because they find that to be the most meaningful and satisfactory use of their time.

Artistic expression is a luxury, not a necessity. I get that you disagree, but that is actual reality, the actual real world.

I would argue that it is less important to focus on the wealthy few, and more important to focus on an acceptable minimum standard of living. That minimum standard is not gifted however. One must participate in society to earn that guaranty. Such participation is not required, it is only required of you want access to social institutions and infrastructure. It of course would be a priority to meet the needs of those incapable of participating/contributing to society.

I do not see limiting or restricting wealth accumulation as a priority, rather, it is more important to structure society such that wealth does not provide disproportional power and influence in society as is the current state of affairs. This to me, should be our greatest concern.

You bang on about the super rich and what they spend their money on, but it is rich people who have the excess resources to buy the fine art, hire the artistic craftsman, donate to theater companies and opera houses, fund park improvements, etc.

My vision for society is one that continues to progress and improve. Due to the intrinsic nature of human behavior, incentive systems facilitate innovation and creativity. You decry capitalism, apparently in any form, yet it is this economic system that best enables a progressive, progressing society.

 

[MikeF]

If I were on the committee, you would need to show a body of work, not just one. You would need to write something about what your doing in this body of work, and why. And you would need to articulate a need for help. For example, you are working a job, making a living, and doing OK, but you are having to work with acrylics because you can't afford oil paints. So you are seeking a grant that would cover the cost of changing to oil paints.

Or maybe you're doing fine making a living and making art, but you need help getting your work seen.

Maybe you're wanting to go in a new direction and need to buy a different set of tools to do that.

Real artists have real needs. And as a society we should support them, because WE NEED THEM. And really, it costs very little compared to the money we spend as a nation of stuff that we don't need. Just because it's politically expedient.

Well, that's great then. Some actual gatekeeping, a selective and discriminating process. So not at all the same as welfare, food stamps, or Medicaid.

 

[PruePhillip]

Not when they are rigged by gerrymandering, by an onslaught of media lies paid for by corporate lobbyists to put their toadies in office, and not by a public that can't tell reason from malicious fantasy.

So tell me, what is the RATIO of Liberal to Conservative media sources in America?
And what is the ratio of Liberal to Conservative universities in America?
Do you believe CNN, NY Times and Washington Post for instance, are paid corporate mouthpieces?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

I would argue that it is less important to focus on the wealthy few, and more important to focus on an acceptable minimum standard of living. That minimum standard is not gifted however. One must participate in society to earn that guaranty.

Arguably they want you to buy in almost completely. As far as I understand it, you cannot buy a piece of land and just set up a tent, or tiny house, in many places. Instead, they want you to hook up to the grid, meet their structural standards, and pay the taxes that fund things you may well not be interested in.

Also what about a right to land once you are born? If you were for every individual reaching their full potential, wouldn't you agree that each individual should have more of a foundation?

 

[Valjean]

So tell me, what is the RATIO of Liberal to Conservative media sources in America?

Liberal media are few and far between, and I don't count CNN, NPR or the N.Y. Times as liberal media.

And what is the ratio of Liberal to Conservative universities in America?

Do liberal and conservative even apply to universities?

Very few non- religious colleges have political platforms, though some have agreed to accept appointments of right-wing professors or right-wing vetoes on staffing in exchange for corporate contributions and endowments; and some have pretty thoroughly embraced Right-wing economic policies (google "Chicago School economics").
In general colleges just teach facts, and let the chips fall where they may.

Do you believe CNN, NY Times and Washington Post for instance, are paid corporate mouthpieces?

No. It's the right-wing corporations and politicians that have been supporting media. Why do you think right-wing talk radio became so ubiquitous? Unlike left wing radio, right wing shows like Limbaugh were corporately funded. Radio stations could play them free. They were -- are -- an important political tool.

 

[PruePhillip]

Liberal media are few and far between, and I don't count CNN, NPR or the N.Y. Times as liberal media.
Do liberal and conservative even apply to universities?

Very few non- religious colleges have political platforms, though some have agreed to accept appointments of right-wing professors or right-wing vetoes on staffing in exchange for corporate contributions and endowments; and some have pretty thoroughly embraced Right-wing economic policies (google "Chicago School economics").
In general colleges just teach facts, and let the chips fall where they may.
No. It's the right-wing corporations and politicians that have been supporting media. Why do you think right-wing talk radio became so ubiquitous? Unlike left wing radio, right wing shows like Limbaugh were corporately funded. Radio stations could play them free. They were -- are -- an important political tool.

CNN for instance did a long running CAMPAIGN against Trump, to the point of outright political BIAS.
WHO in the corpporate world supported this?
On American campuses the staff, particularly professors in the humanities, have something like a 90% bias towards Democrats or Greens or worse.
Antisemitism is the one sin you won't be 'cancelled' for.
Sorry, I failed to see the corporatism in these institutions.

 

[Valjean]

CNN for instance did a long running CAMPAIGN against Trump, to the point of outright political BIAS.

Interesting. Can you link me to this?

WHO in the corpporate world supported this?

Supported what? CNN? I don't know of any corporate support for CNN.

On American campuses the staff, particularly professors in the humanities, have something like a 90% bias towards Democrats or Greens or worse.

It's more a bias toward facts.
Universities analyze. They study multiple, intertwined facts and historical outcomes of various movements and policies. They know social psychology, anthropology, and sociology, history and ecology.
The scientific facts are simply more congruous with the policies promoted by Democrats or Greens. Nobody is promoting any political platform.
Republicans simply don't critically analyze multifarious facts. They're not usually economically or historically literate. They're intolerant of nuance or ambiguity. They make quick, efficient decisions based on emotion and intuition.

Antisemitism is the one sin you won't be 'cancelled' for.

????

Sorry, I failed to see the corporatism in these institutions.

Have you read Mayers' Dark Money, or any similar historical analyses?
Read. If you find it too dense, I can recommend other, more readable histories.