IDK who needs to read this but investments in contemporary art have had higher returns than the S&P 500 for decades. Art > the stock market from a moneymaking POV.
Being a studio/wedding musician has secretly always been a more reliable career than sports… or science.
I accurately predicted many of the major problems in my adult life due to studying liberal arts when I was a teenager.
So. It is increasingly hilarious to me hearing all of these STEMlords hate on the arts 🤣
@jake2 Sure, I guess I kinda shifted subjects partway through. But the fact is that art is currently a more solid investment than stocks, and actually has been for most of my life. The specific reasons are less important. Meanwhile the REASONS for tax evasion are much less than they were in previous generations as the overall tax load on wealthy people is much lower than it was at almost any point in the 20th century
@sidereal@jake2 The people who make money from art-as-investment are generally not artists. The art market is basically the stock market except with an object attached and the veneer of looking cultured. Sometimes artists themselves make loads of money (Koons and so on), but that's rare, and especially by comparison with the money that's changing hands among investor-collectors.
People say it's difficult to make it as a musician, but I know there are far more professional musicians my age than tenure-track academics my age. I know way more people who dropped out of graduate programs than who gave up on being musicians. Some of them actually became musicians as their backup career. And the cherry on top? Most of my musician friends never went into debt to become musicians.
My friends who work in Hollywood make more money than anyone else I know personally.
Art makes money because it is incredibly valuable.
Art actually makes a lot more money than financial speculation, because financial speculation is not capable of increasing value, only discovering and exploiting it.
@sidereal I'll have to crack the paywall on the article, but Baron Melvyn Bragg (who presented the South Bank Show for many years) mentioned this (from a British perspective) in a Times article and berated the present government for defunding the arts (especially considering that Britain was once a leader in the creative industries - the problem we have here is so many entry level paths have been closed off to anyone not from an upper class background (who can afford for first work for free)
@vfrmedia Yep, it's like the neoliberal brainworms have made capitalists forget that they once funded modern art to make the Soviet Union look stuck in the past lol
@sidereal Sir Lenny Henry (one of Britain's first Black British actors and TV presenters to have continued success) also wrote an entire book about the same issue, and how the current situation discriminates against anyone from a minority group and this has got worse since the 1970s (even though there is less overt racism/discrimination compared to back then). Currently it seems we have 20 copaganda style TV series being filmed for streaming and a few period dramas but little else
@vfrmedia Lookin up this Baron Bragg guy and he goes hard haha.
"'The creative arts generate more revenue than the life sciences, aerospace and construction industries combined."
It really is that simple! No one wants to live in a world without art. And on the other hand, people who are trained in creativity can go on to do anything they want.
@sidereal on the other hand a friend of mine was fired recently and they were telling me it's not so bad, they know a lot of musicians so they're aware it could be worse
@julieofthespirits Like some of my more successful musician friends are consistently hiring people (merch booth folks, roadies, etc) who I know used to talk shit about them for focusing on music and not school/"a real career". It's delightful, no notes
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