A recent piece I listened to on CBC radio spurred me into action... The brief discussion was on the Canadian government extending funding for its "Tomorrow Starts Today" program for the Arts for another five years. Also mentioned was the Canadian spending on the Arts - the Canada Council for the Arts would get $150 Million (Canadian) per year. Upon hearing that I thought that US funding was not much more than that, but I wasn't sure...Could it be? Off to the web...
It turns out that I was correct, which is bad. The annual funding for the National
Endowment for the Arts in the US is $121M (US). Clearly this is more than the
Canadian amount, but in per capita and per GDP, this amount is pathetic. The
more I dug, the more I found was available on this topic. For the year 2004,
France spends 2.6 BILLION Euros on arts through its Ministère de la culture
et de la communication. Great Britain budgeted this year 412 Million GBP (790
Million USD) on its Arts programs through Arts Council England. There is a report
that uses numbers from the mid 1990s to compare the funding from different countries.
A look at numbers from
this report:
|
Per Capita Arts Spending
(U.S. Dollars)
|
Total Government Arts Spending
(Millions of U.S. Dollars)
|
Australia
|
$25 |
$438 |
Canada |
$46 |
$1,272 |
Finland |
$91 |
$460 |
France |
$57 |
$3,275 |
Germany |
$85 |
$6,886 |
Ireland |
$9 |
$33 |
Netherlands |
$46 |
$714 |
Sweden |
$57 |
$496 |
United Kingdom |
$26 |
$1,150 |
United States |
$6 |
$1,530 |
Source: National Endowment for the Arts, Research Division, Note #74, January 2000 INTERNATIONAL DATA ON GOVERNMENT SPENDING ON THE ARTS
Note that the US numbers include funding from states and local governments,
and funding for the Smithsonian Institute ($358M USD).
I am not a recipient of Arts funding, nor do I work for any Arts agencies.
I do attend concerts, plays, visit museums, etc. And I do see funding for these
drying up as budgets are under attack.
But, so what? Well, it seems that we have no money for the Arts, no money for
the poor, no money for health insurance, no money for Social Security (you know
what I mean), no money for schools, no money for parks. We have money for rich
people, for prisons and war. So plop down in front of your TV and switch between
fake reality shows and fake footage of real wars and forget about it.