RALEIGH – Sometimes, when faced with an absurd public-policy argument, you should just shake your head and spare the arguer any further embarrassment.
This is not one of those times.
Arts advocates in North Carolina and around the country have for years devoted significant time and resources trying to make the case for government subsidy by proclaiming big economic or academic benefits. I vividly recall a “study” released about 15 years ago by an arts group in Wake County that claimed every dollar “invested” in local arts organizations would return $9 in net economic growth, as dollars circulated among patrons, artists, vendors, and institutions. This is old-fashioned, idiotic Keynesianism, dressed up in stylish new threads (probably all-black). But some local news media fell for it then, and continue to buy similar claims today.
On the academic side, well-meaning supporters of arts education, worried about the declining importance placed on subjects for which there is no standardized-testing program, have claimed that immersion in the arts helps students do well in their other studies. Unfortunately, the evidence is rather thin for this proposition, too, as a recent RAND Corporation study of the issue reveals.
The RAND report, in fact, offers the best argument for arts funding (though not necessarily for coercive funding from government): that the arts are intrinsically valuable, that cultivating artistic expression among young people is the key to maintaining a thriving arts community. Why care about this? Because appreciating art is an end in itself. It is fundamental to the human experience. It broadens the mind and opens the heart.
As a lifelong consumer of – and sometime practitioner of – the arts in various forms, I find this argument noble and persuasive. But others don’t, primarily because they continue to see government as a necessary funder of arts programs. So they’re attacking the RAND report for getting the economics and academics wrong. “It’s confusing. I’m not exactly sure what the motivation is for this,” Robert Lynch, president of Americans for the Arts, told a Sante Fe newspaper. His group claims that the nonprofit arts sector injected $134 billion a year into the national economy and spawned nearly 5 million jobs.
Mr. Lynch, the motivation here is to save the case for the arts from being adulterated by embarrassing fools like you.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.com.