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.

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.

They should get basic income too, good idea

Agreed. Can just all myself an artist to get other people's tax money?

These guys are less stubborn when it comes to ruining your life for some vision?

Unemployed artist still make art

>I don’t get it.

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?

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.

I hate to reply with a joke but you are one, so:

1. Nobody likes insurance salespeople 2. Unemployed carpet installers do not exist

...and I'm done commenting on Hacker News. What a group of interesting forumusers this is that yours is the top comment.

they do deserve, but looks like this is a pilot for UBI.

What kind of undervalued labor do unemployed salespeople and carpet installers perform during unemployment?

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

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.

Growing up in the UK, we would be sent to a “play scheme” during the school holidays. Weird phrase.

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.

> crap art that no one wanted.

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.

There was also the WPA program in the USA:

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.

Oddly enough I have just finished making the same observation and used the word 'crap' to describe the result, without even seeing your comment.

Sounds a bit like if the state invested in startups … hm wait.

I have a feeling that this art will end up all over the walls.

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.

I dont see how we are getting "answers". Disagreeing with program design is not a question.

Tbh though, that doesn't sound that special. Many countries subsidize artists.

> 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.

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.

Deeply ironic that those who claim to support socialism are so okay with taking from the poor to give to the rich.

> 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.

Close

> 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.

> not a UBI

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"

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.

The term universal isn't used in the article.

They've re-branded for the release, and removed "Universal".

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.

And? that's what "rolling out" is about, to test and gradually use the scheme if it works

State will tax it. And the tax amount from 1M is infinitely bigger than the tax from 0

Is art subjective?

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.

Why wouldn't you? How do you define merit to artists? Many of the greatest artists of all time lived their entire lives in poverty and desperation.

To not have selection bias so you can measure the effects

Random selection is possibly the fairest way to select almost anything, depending on your definition of fair.

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.

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.

Yes, most of us are programmers. The government should support us, too, since we'll soon be less useful than trad musicians.

It... isn't?

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).

Won't this kind of shaft their employment prospects as well?

Other industries don't move as fast but a 3 year layoff in tech could be a career death sentence.

> 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.

> Overall It's a bit sad going to American bars and not hearing the whole bar singing along to the musician up on stage.

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

Why is "singing along" a relevant metric?

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.

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.

I need to hear more about the baseball cap thing.

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.