Arts and Stimulus: $8 Billion? Or $0?

Why is Baltimore Sun economics writer Jay Hancock misleading his readers?

On Friday, Hancock wrote, "Arts and culture are great, but they are products of prosperity and economic growth; they do not create them." This—and little else, certainly nothing in the way of figures to frame his argument—he writes in response to a post by USC School of Policy, Planning, and Development professor Elizabeth Currid for the school's Politics and Society blog.

In her post, Currid wrote about the "algebraic joke" that the arts industry received in the stimulus package, a mere $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. Currid adds up the numbers and finds:

When you do the calculations, the sum allocated to the arts through the stimulus package actually seems a bit stingy. Just to be clear: The financial industry posts losses of $763 billion and tens of thousands of jobs, and the government commits hundreds of billions of dollars to bailing the industry out. According to Americans for the Arts, for-profit arts industries contribute $166.2 billion, generate 5.7 million jobs and return nearly $30 billion in government revenue annually — and they get $50 million from the government.

Currid isn't the first to take note of the economic benefit of the arts, which employs 5 percent of the workforces of New York City and Los Angeles. Ben Adler wrote a tidy summary for The Atlantic in February, and the people at the Institute for Policy Studies declared in December that fully 1 percent, or $7.8 billion*, from the stimulus should have been directed toward the arts and provided a lot of ideas for how to spend that money. But as much as the arts are worth to Americans, they are worth much, much more to Republicans, who demagogue on the subject every opportunity they get.

No telling what beef Hancock has with Currid's argument, because he doesn't say. Does he disagree that the arts generate tax revenue and jobs, or does he have a special idea in mind with "restoring aggregate demand," or, well, I don't know what? He should clarify, since he appears to be either ignorant or wrong.

* Here I am figuring on 1 percent of the total $787 billion stimulus package. The IPS gave this figure as $6 billion, working with a December vision of a $600 stimulus package, but the IPS declaration clearly means that 1 percent of whatever the total stimulus eventually winds up being should go to the arts. And this number could go up.

Posted by Kriston at April 20, 2009 2:13 PM