The mass of people have always been taxed to support "culture" whether in
the United States or elsewhere. During the heyday of private financing --
the era of the Rockefellers, Fords, Carnegies, Mellons, and others -- the
money invested by the wealthy in the arts was wrung from their workers
and half of the population of America struggled daily with poverty. Mr.
Jefferson built and endowed the University of Virginia with the sweat of
his slaves, and, as Will Rogers noted, "Andrew Carnegie takes the bread
from the widow's mouth to provide the banker's daughter with a free copy
of _Ben Hur_," or words to that effect. In a more modern vein, the
corporations that support cultural and artistic events write off such
expenditures as business expenses or charitable donations and shift the
burden of taxation they thus avoid to the population at large.
The question is not whether the citizen in a republic will be or should be
taxed to support the arts, but who will decide how and for whose
benefit those funds will be expended.
Lynn
(Lynn Nelson)
University of Kansas
lhnelson@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu