Musings

Thoughts on social change & life in SF

[katmwelch-blog]

"Arts-related spending supports 8,529 full-time jobs, generating $195 million in household income and $21 million in tax revenue for local and state government.

Nationally, the nonprofit arts industry produced $135.2 billion in activity. That includes $61.1 billion in direct spending by organizations, $74.1 billion in spending by audiences. Nationally, arts activity netted $22.3 billion to federal, state and local government in taxes."

[katmwelch-blog]

"The critics miss the enormous diversity of both sides of the labor market. They tend to be grim materialists, who equate economic value with functional practicality. In reality, however, a tremendous amount of economic value arises from pleasure and meaning — the stuff of art, literature, psychology and anthropology. These qualities, built into goods and services, increasingly provide the work for all those computer programmers. And there are many categories of jobs, from public relations to interaction design to retailing, where insights and skills from these supposedly frivolous fields can be quite valuable. The critics seem to have never heard of marketing or video games, Starbucks or Nike, or that company in Cupertino, California, the rest of us are always going on about. Technical skills are valuable in part because of the “soft” professions that complement them."