[rollei_list] Re: OT: Corporate Responsibility and Public Giving
- From: "Fox, Robert" <RFox@xxxxxxxx>
- To: <rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2005 12:54:37 -0500
Marc,
You said "In the end, the taxpayers rebelled, the politicians reacted by
shutting down funding to make the voters happy.." This is a myth--there
was never any taxpayer rebellion over Andres Serrano's image in question
("Piss Christ").
The only reason anyone outside of the NYC art community ever knew about
Serrano's exhibit was due to right-wing ideologues in Congress who were
looking for a good scapegoat to deny any public funding to arts of any
kind. They found a great scapegoat in Serrano.
Meanwhile, the newly minted Secretary of Education in the current
administration has the identified the *real danger* that threatens all
children's education: the "Postcards from Buster" program on PBS.
R.J.
-----Original Message-----
From: rollei_list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:rollei_list-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Marc James Small
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 6:39 PM
To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [rollei_list] OT: Corporate Responsibility and Public Giving
Richard
I suspect that you are conflecting three or four developments into one.
First, there is no "government" funding of anything: there are
decisions
made by politicians as to how the taxpayers' dollars should be spent.
"Government" funding of the arts led to politically charged items such
as
the taxpayers being paid to commission a crucifix in a vat of urine, for
instance, and we need not discuss "performance art". In the end, the
taxpayers rebelled, the politicians reacted by shutting down funding to
make the voters happy, and Bob's your uncle. Low funding and that which
exists is severely controlled to avoid embarrassments such as these in
the
future.
Second, the death rate from poverty was roughly the same among the adult
population in New York City in the 1870's as it is today. But, back
then,
private charity did what public welfare does today. Consider that the
middle class were a lot better off in 1875 than they are today due to
the
absence of government taxation. Then, as now, the middle class
represented
the heart of chartible and artistic giving but the percentages given
were
vastly higher then than they are now, as that middle-class breadwinner
got
to keep his monies and thus could find his pursestrings tugged by
thoughts
of conscience in amounts impossible with today's confiscatory tax
structure. And the middle class was about as large a percentage of the
population in 1875 as it is today, depending on just how you define
classes
(these can be defined either culturally or economically, and the results
vary as a result). =3D20
Third, the absolute duty of corporate officers to maximize stockholder
earnings was established by the FORD case in 1922 and has remained the
law
of this land thereafter. In fact, corporate officers have a fiduciary
duty
to maximize such earnings and, if they fail to do so, they are
personally
liable for their failure to do so. So long as a complete write-off was
allowed, corporate sponsorship of the arts such as Texaco's
long-standing
(60 years, give or take) underwriting of the Metropolitan Opera's radio
broadcasts on Saturday afternoons was acceptable but, once the
government
began to cut back on the write-off allowed, nervous boards of directors
cut
back on their support.
Fourth, the overhead for the arts has ramped up dramatically over the
past
century. This includes both the cost of performers and artists but also
the administrative costs. The freight to hire a cello player in 1900
was
limited by the fact that there were a LOT of young folks floating about
without gainful employment who played the cello, but such is not the
case
today. In 1900, many high school students and other youngsters were
raised
in the playing of a musical instrument, so the pool of talent available
to
a symphony orchestra was large. Today, however, very few youngsters
learn
anything other than the electric keyboard, geetar, or drums, and so the
talent pool is much more directed towards obtaining rather substantial
salaries. The situation is much worse, of course, for the orchestra
located in a union-friendly state but, even so, the salaries paid to
performers have increased at something on the order of ten times the
inflationary rate, a symbol of the success of supply and demand as an
economic reality.
The administrative situation is worse and results from the reality that
arts institutions, like higher education, had absolutely no cost
controls
between roughly 1930 and 1990. Thus, these institutions became sloppy
and
allowed their costs to escalate without a lot of concern over this
development. Once private and public funding began to slack off, these
guys started screaming about a "crises" but the reality is that there is
a
tremendous amount of fat in the administrative end of even a relatively
small art gallery or chamber-music program. (Yet, at the same time,
there
are only the barest funds available for, say, the restoration of older
paintings or the production of avant garde musical compositions.)
The issue is immensely complex but the simplest solution would be to
adopt
the Fair Tax Proposal (HB 25), which would completely eliminate the
income
tax and thus would return to the 1875 system of allowing our consciences
to
guide our contributions to cultural activities.
Marc
msmall@xxxxxxxxxxxx=3D20
Cha robh b=3DE0s fir gun ghr=3DE0s fir!
Other related posts:
