AOX has apparently hijacked heroin's account again. Either that, or we need another intervention because apparently:
Calm down a bit. If you like paying the current tax rate, that's your choice. I do not, which his why I have no probs cutting out things I find useless to me and my family. We have directv, hulu, netflix, the internet, dvd, etc. I have ZERO need for govt subsidized programs that I already have through that media. Now, do I like "the arts", sure I do. We need folks like The Artist to make our lives more enjoyable. Do I prefer govt subsidized "arts" to tax cuts? Nope. Same goes for Big Bird.
Government only subsidizes bad or unpopular art. Good art, like good food, good clothing, and good housing, sells itself.
Being a successful artist requires talent, hard work, sacrifice, and the desire to create something that makes other people happy. Being a
wealthy artist is about as hard as becoming a profesional athlete. Society is littered with the bodies of artists who dreamed the dream, but didn't possess the talent or drive to create a product that people valued.
Art is subjective, but that doesn't mean that because 12,000 people like photographs of toenails, the photographer has a right to be supported by 100 million people who do not enjoy photographs of toenails. We do a grave diservice to art, and society in general when we subsidize any venture incapable of supporting itself.
The debate on government subsidized TV (as with all other gubment programs) always boils down to the term "access," and historically, when we had far narrower band-width, that was a valid point. The problem is that today there are a multitude of venues that provide "access" to educational, creative, inspirational, and scientific programming funded through the support of the free market. The quality and popularity of these offerings is far greater than any subsidized effort could hope to be. This is actually good for public media, because it creates a pressure to compete that forces improvement in quality, it however does force the subsidized industries to cry for additional funding, or be forced to transform into something more modern. We have actually seen this over the years as public television has become more commercial.
I think this is a wonderful point for debate, that offers a spectrum of possible outcomes for publicly funded programming, all of which are a move in the right direction (because there is no going back).