Goverments should not fund the arts?

Question

what do you think about this?

Answer 1

The government does not need to have its hand in everything. Government funded art encourages people who are not artist to create ungodly monstrosities just to get a check.

Answer 2

Governments should take an interest in the arts, funding is perhaps a sticky point, but if there is lots of transparency, low poverty, and nothing more pressing in the country, then the arts should definitely receive a fair cut from the tax man.

Answer 3

Art is, in its most creative expression, a statement of the soul. In a corrupt culture, owned by psychopaths, who have no connection whatever to their souls, arts are generally irrelevant or viewed as "dissent".

While art should be funded by government, as a means of uplifting the consciousness of its citizens, it is a wonder that our government, in its present state of  dysfunction, would even consider the matter.  And, if i'm not mistaken, present funding is a mere shadow of its former levels.

Answer 4

Sarah:

There was a time when I agreed with this statement, but I have changed my mind.  What I have to say will not be very popular here, but I will say it anyway:

A society (U.S.) that complains bitterly about how much it has to pay its public school teachers and educators while happily tolerating and paying (in part through ever-increasing ticket prices) for the obscene salaries of most of its sports and entertainment "superstars" -- none of whom, by the way, are serious artists -- is a society desperately in need of government funding to support its artistic and cultural life.

A society whose taxpayers fork over hundreds of billions of dollars a year to feed the insatiable hunger of a behemoth military machine whose sole purpose is to wreak death and destruction around the world in the name of "freedom" is a society desperately in need of government funding to support its artistic and cultural life.

A society that all too often witnesses the senseless deaths of innocent people at the hands of a deranged man with a gun but vehemently defends gun ownership as a "God-given right" is a society desperately in need of government funding to support its artistic and cultural life.

A society, the wealthiest on the planet, that tolerates hunger, homelessness and poverty among its people while it defends and promotes tax policies that disproportionately favor the rich on the discredited belief that the creation of wealth lifts people from poverty is a society desperately in need of government funding to support its artistic and cultural life.

It's a matter of priorities, and ours strike me as bizarre, inverted and bankrupt.  It seems to me that some government funding for the arts is a small price to pay for a chance to reorder these priorities.