Ireland rolls out basic income scheme for artists

> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids.

In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation.

Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?

Citation needed. "Cobain thought Seattle was too expensive a place to live. He couldn’t even afford his Olympia apartment, and was evicted for not paying rent while he was recording Nevermind.”[1] "They supported themselves through food stamps, sleeping on porches."[2]

[1]https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/that-magic-...

[2]https://www.livenirvana.com/interviews/9307rh/index.php

I live in a fairly expensive city in the UK. Working minimum wage for 2 weeks will pay for a room in a flat share, plus my households food and required bills.

It’s not much of a life but the same still stands in many cities.

> people who have to create "wealth"

most people don't "create wealth". They're forced to serve up half of their awake time to someone that is "wealthy", most likely through inheritance.

I agree with your sentiment but in practice that criticism only shows that this measure is insufficient, not that it's a net negative.

I think it should go a lot further than it does but it seems unambiguously positive even by your own framing.

Or it divides them into people that create cultural wealth and people who create mere monetary wealth.

So you do agree that art should be supported by government I see, so how would you do it?

You get different rewards, not different rights.

It's the same as cities/governments spending on free public basketball courts/tennis courts/running tracks. I come from a country with none of those things, and the difference that makes on the average fitness/skill level of the population is massive compared to places where those things exist.

Both basic income, and public sporting infrastructure have a significant (but not unreasonable) upfront cost, but the payoff in even 2 years time will be massive. Provided the economics check out, there's no reason to not give it a shot.

You don't have to wonder whether or not it returns value to the tax payer. The Irish government already monitored the pilot program for two years, publishing all of the details and findings. [1]

"The headline finding from this social CBA is that for every €1 of public money invested in the pilot, society received €1.39 in return"

This came about as a mixture of greater economic activity from participants, cultural impacts that saw public-facing artist activities increase, and improvements to wellbeing of participants that reduced their requirement for psychological interventions by the state. The state also predicts that the further roll-out of this program will benefit consumers with lower prices for artistic works, as there will be more supply overall.

The scheme has been quite popular here in Ireland. Given the history of Ireland when it comes to art (both in the sense of spoken and written word, and in other mediums), it makes sense to introduce a scheme like this to safeguard and uplift those who produce art.

[1] https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...

> Your either don't understand or don't want to understand what people are commenting about here.

From reading your comment I think this observation applies to your own understanding, not the gp's.

> whether the value of the money paid by tax payers to artists, equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return. [...] one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

You might not see it but this is effectively equivalent to thinking only money has value, because you're describing a system whereby value is defined by money. Your dichotomy assumes anything that cannot be sold has no value, & anything that is sold is only as valuable as its price. The emergent conclusion from that formula is that only money has value.

It's worth noting that it also follows from this that value is defined by people with purchasing power. If for example the only cohort who value any given piece of art cannot afford to financially support the artist creating said art, not only is the art & the artist's work without value, but by extension so too are the perspectives, autonomy & - ultimately - the lives of that cohort without value.

I also wonder why the tax payers who care can’t contribute directly to a fund, and keep government out of entirely.

> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money.

Because the skills and effort needed to market and sell your art to an audience are not equal to the skills and effort needed to produce good art [1].

I agree that there could be other complementary or better solutions compared to this scheme. But as long as the above premise is true, not every good artist will want or be able to sell well.

[1] However you define this. Supposedly, Van Gogh was a lousy salesman, but a good artist.

Art is often only appreciated in retrospect, so it is typically undervalued at the time of its creation.

> equals the value of what they give to the tax payers in return

This seems incredibly shortsighted.

Nobody pays to view a mural, but a lot of people view it, and property values go up as a result. It cost the artist time, effort, and money to make it, and if you hire an artist specifically to make a mural, it's prohibitively expensive for an individual.

Better to amortize the cost across the population and have public works. Like we do for infrastructure. Seems to work just fine.

There are many things that are valuable to people, but which they would rather not pay for. They include public goods and externalities, like infrastructure and education and a reasonable amount of military. It makes a lot of sense that people would rather enjoy art for free if they had the option, and since the majority of art experience can be easily duplicated and transmitted, why pay for it yourself? There is also another benefit of art stimulating further intellectual and creative development of a society, perhaps yielding second order benefits that are hard to quantify. Thus overall, it can make a lot of sense for government to pay for art as a society.

> one might wonder why they apparently are not able to sell their art for the same amount of money

"Public goods" like parks, museums, bridges, roadways, transit, nature preserves, community spaces, and public safety services produce both direct value to their immediate users as well as substantial diffuse value to their community. Direct value can be captured by user fees, tolls, subscriptions, etc but capturing diffuse value is challenging. A park raises surrounding property values even for people who do not visit the park. Good transportation infrastructure increases the value of surrounding land and and productivity per capita even for nonusers. Relying solely on user fees may force some of these entities to close or fall into disrepair, thereby reducing overall value by substantially more than it would have cost to maintain them. And in some cases shifting the cost burden to direct users substantially lowers the diffuse value, for example back when fire fighting companies would let houses burn unless their owners paid them, ultimately resulting in more overall community fire damage.

In these cases, subsidizing these public services with taxes (optimally Georgist land-value taxes) is an economically rational decision.

One could plausibly argue that artists similarly produce diffuse value e.g., raising the profile of their nation or culture, making their neighborhood a more desirable place for people with money. Not only do artists typically struggle to collect a share of this diffuse value, as renters the very value they create often ends up pricing out of their community. I could imagine cases where it is a net benefit for a government to subsidize such entities if such subsidy is less than the fraction of the diffuse benefit that ends up being collected by taxes.

I have no insight as to whether this scheme in particular is net positive, please see sibling posts for that. I'm just explaining that such arrangements are both economically rational and extremely common in high-functioning societies.

Unlike baking bread, It can take decades for an artist to become experienced enough to create something of value.

Some art, like classical music composition, is and has been propped up by grants and wealthy donors since forever.

Whether that’s a good allocation of resources is of course entirely subjective :)

What’s “corporate masters” got to do with a transaction from taxes and inflation (stolen value on your savings and spending power) to a handout?

Just to answer the question in this specific case: yes, a working class guy can decide he wants to pursue art (in quite a broad range of forms), and he can apply for the basic income once he can show that he is working as an artist. The artists who ultimately receive the payment will be chosen randomly once they meet the criteria to apply in the first place (which, again, is simply that you are working as an artist—exhibiting, publishing, performing, whatever "work" might mean in your case). There is a fixed number of people who can receive it in each round (I think it's 2500 people, cycling every three years), and those people are picked by lottery; if you receive it in one round, you cannot apply for the next. This, and in fact no arts funding in Ireland, has anything to do with certain universities or art degrees. This scheme is far from perfect, but these vaguely leading questions (so common to all commentary on public funding for the arts) are clearly irrelevant.

As for the second question ("would Daniel James work have been as good if he wasn't working in an ironworks"), well, life and art really are too varied to draw the kind of conclusions the following comment implies.

Heck yeah, go be an artist! If you want to be one and aren't, what's stopping you? Perhaps the lack of financial security? ;)

Here's a non-exhaustive list of eligible types:

https://www.gov.ie/en/department-of-culture-communications-a...

You're saying the quiet part out loud. Clearly we just need to pay people to "make art" all day long on the backs of taxpayers who will most likely never see the "art" or derive any value from it.

"Dad why are you working your hands off? Well... the government decided to pay people to "make art" instead of working. How come? Well... nope I have no fucking idea"

Corporations produce things (productive), while UBI rewards unproductive behavior (theoretically)

I wonder, can we not turn all threads into a "when will AI do this creative thing better than humans".

Humans need basic income (or at least resources) and to have culturally valuable work to do. Art and craft esp as a form of human expression seems like we should ASSUME that humans want to do this, that we as a society value the human energy that goes into it.

> Will human generated art still be as respected/valuable?

I would hope that humans would always value human generated art, but these days it seems that many businessmen and AI bros do not. Perhaps they are not human.

Whip them to the hamster wheel...

> All form of welfare should keep a person alive, but never comfortable.

Why? We are well beyond the scarcity that would require this.

Don't tax labor, or capital which helps assist labor with performing economic activity ,or at least tax as little as possible.

Instead, focus on taxing scarce resources, especially since we cannot make more of it. If it's natural resources coming out of the grounds such as minerals and oil, it becomes a severance tax.

If we're talking about occupying land, then it's a Land Value Tax.

You could also tax negative externalities like pollution or traffic congestion.This is known as a Piguovian tax.

Which tax rates? We have dozens. What determines fairness is how the resources in our society are allocated once all is said and done. Income, tax rates, and even money itself is just an abstraction.

> if i keep less than half of what i make, that feeling of fairness wears thin.

How fairly you made that money in the first place and what you get in return in the form of government services makes all the difference.

Ireland is a tax haven though?

It has a tendency to lead societies to do things like round up all the artists and intellectuals and against-the-wall when-the-revolution-comes them.

What has that got to do with my comment?

you can't really fake the labor that goes into mastering a craft any more significantly than one can fake labor at a white collar job, let alone some level of institutional involvement that any professional pursuit would end up with (i.e., showing a work at the gallery on main st or giving workshops at the community center), so this isn't actually that challenging of a question in practice. even with highly conceptual work there's still an involved studio/research practice to audit

if your artistic practice is truly so abstract that you can't prove labor by any material means then you probably just won't get subsidized for it.

I’d say that’s correlation, not causation. Just because past artists have struggled to make ends meet doesn’t mean it’s a requirement to make art.

He was in his 40s when he wrote his most famous work, that would qualify as a portfolio in Ireland and get the grant.

I reckon the 20 years as an iron puddler he had done by then had built his character already.

Yes they are.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Independent_scientist... - "An independent scientist (formerly called a gentlemen scientist) is a scientist with a private income who can pursue scientific study independently as they wish without excessive external financial pressures."

Including: Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin (Evolution), Ben Franklin, Robert Boyle (Boyle's gas law), Oliver Heaviside (electromagnetic theory, co-axial cables), Alexander von Humboldt (established modern Geography), Thomas Jefferson, Leopold Kronecker, Alessandro Volta (voltaic pile battery)

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_scientist - "Self-funded scientists practiced more commonly from the Renaissance until the late 19th century, including the Victorian era, especially in England, before large-scale government and corporate funding was available. Many early fellows of the Royal Society in London were independent scientists. "

Including "Charles Babbage, Henry Cavendish (discovered Hydrogen), Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Thomas Young (Young's modulus of elasticity, eyeball focusing), Joseph Priestly (discovered oxygen)

Rene Decartes "arrived in La Haye in 1623, selling all of his property to invest in bonds, which provided a comfortable income for the rest of his life."

And basically any tenured professor paid to do whatever interests them, or academic or researcher, especially mathemticians, hired and paid for blue sky research, all the places like Bell Labs that HN loves.

The majority of great works created by the ruling classes of Athens or London at the height of both cultures ascendency is a major counterexample. Maybe we just had bad luck as to today's ruling class.

Everyone is capable of creating art.

We're not objectively deciding what is art and what isn't, up front. Who decides what counts? Who's to say an AI generated self-published vomit novels on Amazon aren't as valid as anything else.

If someone was in college this could be a way for them to get going right after they graduate without having to take some other non-art job instead.

If a system is based on a userbase pulling the ladder from under them in order to make sure only they can benefit from it, then it's not a good or fair system from the get go.

Maybe the issue is with the definition of the profession of artist, that's it's too vague and fluid allowing anyone to claim to be one without much hassle.

But then if you have a strict definition of the artist profession, everyone will rush to conform to the bare minimum of that in order to score those benefits.

So maybe then the core issue is with the welfare state that unfairly picks winners and losers instead of being "universal".

Artist have exited way before the welfare state has. They were poor and had patrons who supported them if they loved their work. So then why do we need the state to subsidize this now? Do we have proof this leads to higher quality art?

Oh no!

Seriously though, having a basic income that is not basic was bound to give issues.

Additionally i would argue that in every such programm there will be people that abuse the system. Just because gp knows one such person, does not mean that everybody will be doing that.

The article also mentions that overall the program had a positive impact.

That's also CalRobert's post, so it refers to the same person.

I remember learning about this in high school, but grew up in a part of a large city that only really developed after the 1940's, I didn't think much of it. However, the name was catchy so I had it stashed in my memory somewhere.

As I've gone on to live in a few older cities, I have been surprised the number of times that I have (for example) come across a bridge or tunnel or whatnot and seen a big serif "WORKS PROGRESS ADMINISTRATION 1936" plaque on one side of it. It always feels like stepping into an alternate reality where history is more present and real.

It feels like a silly way to phrase it, but growing up where only a handful of buildings were older than 40 years, encountering history in a more banal form, like a simple bridge with some engravings, always feels more impactful than seeing some 500-year-old castle, monument or other touristy site.

There's a lot of weird and wonderful stuff from that era which came out of the WPA, like the American Guide series. I think we understand that period of time in the US on a deeper level thanks to it.

they hired artists and builders, they had a nice run of building domestic concentration camps that would make Nancy Pelosi scream ice faster than you could blink

Enterprise Ireland is the largest VC firm in the world by amount paid and number of clients.

Due to EU rules on state aid though, it's technically a quango and not part of the government despite being spun off of the then privatised national sugar company.

They also pay Ireland's contributions toward ESA, so the Irish flags you see printed on the side of Ariane rockets aren't a direct result of what the government is doing.

Your mind will be blown once you discover rent seeking behaviour.

Surely you mean a worker owned factory.

Marxists don't like Basic Income and it's incompatible with Marxist ideology.

"Marxism" has just become thought-terminating shorthand for "thing I don't like".

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We have a similar scheme in Slovenia. Don't know the details but there's the concept of a "free artist".

At a minimum you need a registered business, regular exhibitions or performances in your field, you have to register with the ministry of culture, and can't have a job. Contract work is allowed and encouraged. Also you are expected to apply when the government issues a Call For Creatives.

I think you get paid minimum wage as long as you continue fulfilling criteria.

This seems like it mostly funnels money to rich kids, to be honest. Nobody else can afford to already be an artist.

Milton Friedman wouldn’t have approved of a basic-income scheme restricted to artists. He would have argued that restricting the benefit to artists would distort incentives for choosing a profession in a way likely to reduce social welfare, and that eligibility by profession is a “welfare trap”: it’s hard to stop being an artist and start being something else when it means losing your guaranteed income.

But Friedman would have supported a broad basic-income scheme. We know this because he did support one. It was his proposal in 1962 of a “negative income tax” [0] (in Capitalism and Freedom) that gave rise to the movement to replace traditional social welfare programs with simple schemes that just give money to poor people. (This movement led to the Earned Income Tax Credit [1] in the United States.)

Friedman’s negative income tax is equivalent to the contemporary notion of a guaranteed basic income (but not to a universal basic income, as only people earning below some threshold would receive it). Like most economists, Friedman believed that people (even poor people) can typically make their own economic choices better than a government program can make those choices for them. (He was likewise not opposed to redistributive policies per se.) That was the root of his advocacy for market-based mechanisms of organizing the economy.

0. The idea dates to at least the 1940’s, but Friedman’s book is typically credited with popularizing it. See, e.g, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earned_income_tax_credit

> Ireland already has a competitive economy

Ireland's economic statistics are so badly distorted by US companies routing money there that there is an entire subfield of economics dedicated to trying to figure out what Ireland's real economic state is, called "Leprechaun economics". A common adjustment made by economics researchers when studying the EU is to just subtract Ireland entirely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leprechaun_economics

https://www.cfr.org/articles/leprechaun-adjusted-euro-area-g...

https://democracychallenged.com/2025/05/14/irelands-phantom-...

> The key to understanding this disconnect is a number few outside Ireland pay attention to: Modified Gross National Income, or GNI*. Unlike GDP, which counts all activity happening within Ireland’s borders, GNI* adjusts for the distortions caused by the huge presence of foreign multinationals. And the gap is enormous. In 2023, GNI* was just €291 billion — meaning more than €219 billion of Ireland’s reported output never truly flowed into the Irish economy at all.

When looking at Ireland's own economy without the influence of US tax transactions, the economy shrinks by nearly half.

> Ireland already has a competitive economy

Well it has a competitive tax haven.

To need to already have a portfolio of work kind of defeats the purpose, no? It kind of proves you didn't need this money to make art. I would have thought the point was to unlock potential artists who hadn't the time to develop their practice.

Is there a tradition of rich Irish people supporting Irish artists privately?

In other places (like Italy) there is.

Can you name a government-subsidized Irish artist who has been successfully promoted on the world stage?

I don't give a shit about Milton Friedman. I do give a shit about wage earners in Ireland who are being forced to pay for an artist welfare program. Ireland has a competitive economy.

Soon: everyone is an artist.

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> A lot of societies have realized there is value in supporting art and culture.

Basically outlandishly rich and gaudy benefactors have always had so much money they could employ OTHERS to do trivial pursuits. Now - the average taxpayer will bear that cost.

Ok so why don't carpet installers just find jobs?

the irony in this statement is palpable

Then those many should spend their own money. And not steal from the rest of society.

Maybe they could sing up for say extra 20-50% tax which then get distributed.

If they're not paying for it, then they lie if they say it's worth keeping alive.

there is art in getting other people's tax money, so yes

It seems there are 2000 positions and 8000 applicants. The program cost $74M, but more than paid for itself:

> It also recouped more than the trial's net cost of 72 million euros ($86 million) through increases in arts-related expenditure, productivity gains and reduced reliance on other social welfare payments, according to a government-commissioned cost-benefit analysis.

Enjoying art

Carpet installer? Most likely handy enough for building shelter and in general manual labour.

Note that many carpet installers and other handyman also do work (partially) under the table so their salary isn't representative of their regular income either. This also fluctuates a lot based on season. It's the cost of being (partially) self employed.

None of these 2000 artists will create anything close to a single piece of art having any sort of effect on society. I can guarantee it.

I worked in "culture" for a while when I was younger. 90% of it is just disguised unemployment benefits for those that consider it a dirty word barely good enough for the hoi polloi.

If anything, it's a pilot to confuse people about UBI and hopefully make it unpopular. It's not basic, and it's not universal.

> "[...] looks like this is a pilot for UBI."

Did you have to be the party pooper? People were trying to indulge one of the most noble and timeless of pursuits: pissing on the poor! >(

OK, maybe my use of that phrase was a bit ill-judged. However, aside from supporting artists, what did the initiative achieve? Keeping artists off the dole should not be, IMHO, a goal in itself. The reputation of Dutch culture at the time was not brilliant, though neither was it bad. A strategic attitude would have been more effective... maybe target one or two artists and promote them.

The Young British Artists (YBA) boom of the 80s was a product of the innovative teaching environment of Goldsmiths' college plus the drive of people like Damien Hirst, who organized the ground-breaking Freeze exhibition. The British Council did their best to capitalize on this.

You're sort of right. This particular grant is extra curious because it's typically been given to already highly accomplished artists. Sweden is a small pond and although there are a few fun outliers in this crowd, most of them make out the upper echelons of the Swedish cultural societé. Some were born straight into it. Others, no doubt, had parents who could put them there and knew someone who knew someone. One, for example, is Swedish nobility and the son of a diplomat. Another was the son of a Swedish secretary of state.

While I'm sure there are some wholly self-made virtuosos on the list, it does give off an air of apparent nepotism.

>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.

I'd argue they are well equipped to give the appearance of merit, rather than performing higher on actual merit.

They have not, afaik. Here's the list of recipients:

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statlig_inkomstgaranti_f%C3%B6...

> Society is telling your friend that her work is not particularly valuable and that she should probably consider doing something else.

Challenge

> I don’t think it would be possible without the tax exemption.

^ That tax exemption _is_ from society. You may not agree with it, but clearly (at least some part of) "society" does.

There’s plenty of things that are valuable for society while still not having significant financial value.

Society told Van Gogh that nobody wants or will ever want his work. He killed (probably) himself out of depression and feeling unwanted, miserable.

This is a false assumption. We will only know retrospectively whether it was valuable or not.

1. She gets better all the time, and might be super popular in the future 2. Many writings became relevant only long after the death of the author

You’re missing, somewhat gleefully, most of the history of western art, which you could imagine as split between patronage-based art (have you heard of the Sistine Chapel, for instance?) and vernacular art - where things like genre storytelling and family portraits come from.

Broadly speaking, vernacular artists work for a fucking living; it’s rare there (like in most pursuits) to get super rich. We can’t all be David Baldacci or Danielle Steele.

NB: Thanks to Neal Stephenson for the best essay on this. He calls genre artists “Beowulf” artists.

I don't think that being able to support a family of three in Ireland is particularly a sign that society doesn't value your work. If she had to pay income tax, perhaps she'd only be able to support herself -- but if you think everyone in Ireland who only makes enough money to support themselves is doing not particularly valuable work, I think it's worth considering the implications of that.

I have thoughts on how we're defining value as well, but others have covered those.

It's naive to conflate income as a clear signal of what society needs.

As demonstrated, crisps are more valuable to the society than art.

Her work can be valuable, in money terms, even of the value of her work is less than the money needed to support her family.

Society is not telling her that - the labour market is. I guess she should get off her lazy ass and learn how to become a high frequency trader.

All true, but let's not lose track of relative costs.

The income program provides €33,800,000 a year (2000 participants, €325 a week, 52 weeks in a year). Double that to account for cost of managing the program -- that seems too high to me, but I want to err on the side of caution for this analysis.

Some percentage of that money flows right back into the economy, of course.

Meanwhile, ignoring windfall corporate taxes, Ireland ran a €7.4 billion deficit in 2025. So the cost of the program, ignoring the money flowing back into the economy, is under half a percentage point of the budget? Those small amounts do add up, but I can't see this as relevant competition to the cost of shoring up health, housing, and transport. I don't have good estimates of how much those costs are, which is why I'm using the deficit as a relevant proxy, but still -- we ought to avoid the trap of seeing numbers which are large to you and me and forgetting that other numbers are larger by orders of magnitude. (There's a term for this which slips my mind.)

That's a problem with all tax havens. They drastically increase inequality and inflate assets, especially housing and rent.

Why fix one problem, when another problem also exists?

Yes! Can you prove me wrong?

... shouldn't they?

Ultimately that comes out of their pockets. Every tax benefit my neighbor gets simply shifts the tax burden more to me. Unless I am someone who doesn't pay taxes I guess. Do you pay taxes?

> Cynicism with governance not unjustified in Ireland

What do you mean?

Artists picked at random will still be subject to existing conditions, those best able to maneuver within the social and political currents will inevitably outperform those who cannot. Those running the program are ill-equipped to define it’s success, being part of the same regime which routinely delivers bottom-of-the-barrel slop.

Or perchance it is the other way around. The word started as official term and over time got shady connotation because can't trust Big Government.

Similarly, "doubt" has a negative connotation in the US, but I see it often used as a synonym for "question" by Indian speakers of English.

That's hilarious! I hope y'all cleared up the confusion quickly.

There's no good way to evaluate the result anyway.

Grants like this at a small scale is generally inconsequential to the country.

I hope to be the next Rothshild, give me a trillion!

Many people who work as schoolteachers, grocery clerks, etc. at one point might have had ambition to be the next James Joyce.

Those can go and do normal jobs like grocery clerks. While doing their art in free time. Like many famous artists were doing.

Oh, wow. The absolute worst thing that could happen to this sort of program would be for artists to make the decisions about who qualifies.

A story as old as time, unfortunately.

If you want to criticize the study, it would be best to actually read the method rather than make assumptions.

Basic Income and UBI are colloquially synonyms, people use them interchangeably, and the Irish government are almost certainly using it to endear themselves to supporters of UBI and to get more coverage for their policy than media would give them if they just called it a grant.

This happens all the time. For example, in the UK there was a push for a "living wage" in the 2010s, which the government responded to by rebranding the minimum wage the "National Living Wage" and bumping it a little for over-25s.

This seems to be the same thing.

It's not UBI unless they respect the U.

Ireland currently has a population of approximately 5,501,000 people. There is great news: Bono and the rest of his band have agreed to provide subsidies for the 5,499,000 citizens who aren't receiving the BIA funds, and they'll brand this supplemental program as U2BI.

The website will be established shortly as https://ww2.u2bi.ie:212/ as soon as the registrars can correct the typos.

  /s

Good, thoughtful post. Excellent point re states taking over from the Church as patrons of the arts. Ironically Catholic commentators and conservatives in general are very critical of arts grants. It's most disingenous of the conservatives who support the business community to point out that these artists are "living off the taxpayers" when almost the entire business community is propped up by social welfare subsidies for their part-time staff.

Neither nation promises universal income: 8,000 Irish artists applied, and 2,000 were accepted.

Likewise, with the NEA, since they offer grants, you'd need to qualify, apply, and justify your work, and probably renew on an annual basis.

Ireland selected the applicants randomly. I would suppose the 8,000 needed to meet qualifications first.

Ireland promises €325/week. The NEA grants seem to be on a project basis.

So neither of these programs are anything like UBI. UBI is the buzzword that sets us all atwitter with eager hopefulness and aspirations.

Artist grant programs are more like "publish or perish" research scholars. Most grant recipients view the application process as daunting and stressful, especially when it's not in their wheelhouse. "Grant writer" is a job title and a profession unto itself these days. Even charities and welfare organizations depend on grants themselves, so their recipients may be cut off if the grants don't come in on time and fill their budgets.

Ireland's program is like being on the dole. "Here's enough to subsist on while you do your art and try to establish yourself." After 3 years, they're cut off for 3 years, so the incentive exists to become self-sufficient in that time.

Subsidizing the arts has been the realm of religion, including Christianity, for thousands of years. Michelangelo and Bernini were among thousands and thousands of artists who were funded by the Church to create music, sculpture, architecture, images, and any other sacred object in their service. If socialism or communism are the first thing to spring to your mind, please rethink and consider that these philosophies sought to supplant the original collectives: religions; and the religious leaders and patrons were distributing wealth to every possible artisan and artist and composer and performer, in the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. Nobody knows the pain of shrinking churches like Ireland does, and so it really is incumbent on their secular government to pick up the tab here, lest the hands of artists become idle and restless.

What you're describing then would only be a short term chicken and egg problem.

If, once established, a thriving art scene generates value by attracting tourism, wealthy individuals who want to patronize the arts, etc then the artists would be able to charge enough to fund themselves and potentially do very well for themselves.

In that scenario we'd only need to fully subsidize artists for a short period of time, the subsidy law should have an expiry date.

it is a short term benefit.

you are citing distortions of a free market to invoke more distortions. This is the spiral I'm talking about.

Companies are the same that both give salaries to consumers and can up prices. More taxes on companies means higher prices, job cuts, less salary increases. It's not necessary to point out that your quote of the post-war economy is cherry-picking. Plus, after a war it's very easy to get a recovery, especially if you win it.

You talk about the US, but look at countries where the state is both heavy on taxes and inefficient. The point is that you delegate decisions on what do do and how to do it to very few people. They can be good, or be bad. Diversifying on an entire market is better.

The only thing that can save middle/low class consumers is the hope that the state won't increase taxes faster than we can save money. A culture of proper saving, of not falling for luxury items presented as necessary by our peers (or companies selling them), is the only way out. Focusing on what matters.

Most of us are instead living in the illusion that we can live a luxury life.

Price inflation isn't the only type of inflation. Monetary inflation was historically the "inflation" people focused on, and given that Ireland runs a deficit in their state budget this would be adding to the debt and inflating the money supply.

All these places use the word UNCONDITIONAL instead of UNIVERSAL because they are scared of printing money and paying all their citizens, while jacking up pigovian taxes on the other side.

Here is how to do it properly without waiting for the federal government and currency: https://community.intercoin.app/t/rolling-out-voluntary-basi...

Every time UBI or some variant of it are presented, it is always presented as a benefit, so ti seems really nive. What I don't ever see addressed, is how it will work from a cost perspective. UBI is a cost: a Universal Basic Cost. Who will pay basic incomes? Businesses? The tax payers? In both of this cases, why resort to an inefficient method (the state setting prices) instead on relying on price formation as (roughly) it is today? I too don't care about moral, and I'm also sad that both supporters and detractors talk about morals. I'm honestly curious in how it could ever work: because money doesn't grow on trees, that is, value is not extracted from the Earth without labor (and innovation of technologies to work less for the same extraction work). So, in the end, it's a way of redistributing resources.

This is setting morals aside. Moral and ethics could be considered, but it's a far wider topic than a HN comment allows. An hint: nobody asks why a moral phenomenon came up in the first place. It must have had a function in society... maybe it still has today.

And "proper" UBI will never actually be tried, at least not on any significant scale. Because if you actually run the numbers you'll see that the level of taxation required plus the inflationary effects make the whole scheme unworkable.

The trouble is that paying a few people to not work is very very different from paying everyone to not work.

We need people to work to produce the things they need to live. As long as this remains true, UBI can never happen. This fantasy of being able to live without working is out of touch with the cold hard reality.