The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

> I heard one answer more than any other: the government should introduce universal basic income. This would indeed afford artists the security to create art, but it’s also extremely fanciful.

Until we start viewing "fanciful" ideas as realistic, our problems will persist. This article is another in the long series of observations of seemingly distinct problems which are actually facets of a larger problem, namely that overall economic inequality is way too high. It's not just that musicians, or actors, or grocery store baggers, or taxi drivers, or whatever, can't make a living, it's that the set of things you can do to make a living is narrowing more and more. Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

> Broad-based solutions like basic income, wealth taxes, breaking up large market players, etc., will do far more for us than attempting piecemeal tweaks to this or that industry.

Basic income has been tested very thoroughly many different times and all results show it basically doesn't do anything good or bad. So it won't create any new musicians. The main effect is it's simpler to administrate than other kinds of welfare, which is a good thing because it saves money.

Wealth taxes are inflationary (because they force you to sell assets) and so would probably cause fewer musicians. Especially if you assume musicians are nepo babies, in which case you actually need rich/upper-middle-class people to create them.

Anyway, the solution here is to copy other countries where it works. They don't do any of these made-up future policy ideas. Japan/Korea produces a lot of culture because it has a low cost of living, a mature industry that trains a lot of people, and most importantly (but negatively) wages are low so there's nothing more productive for the musicians to be doing. Doubly so for women, who might as well become Z-grade idols when they can't get a career job at all.

In the West IIRC a surprising amount of songwriting talent comes from Sweden, but don't know much about that.