The Death of the Middle-Class Musician

I don't trust the government. Why? Because they can't properly operate with the money they're given by us, the workers. Same goes for many recepients of that money, especially the ones outside of "social help".

Yes, we fund art, we have public tenders, artists apply, they get a few thousand euros, produce something to fit "the current political theme" (eg. everybody is talking about ecology, let's make a performance where they throw trash at eachother), 10, 20, maybe 30 people see that, mostly family and local homeless people coming for the free wine, papers are stamped, checkmarks on all the right places, and money has exchanged hands. I would much rather live in a system where workers get to keep that money and spend it for art in whatever way they want. Even in a "semi-mandated" way (eg. tax benefits if you spend X euros yearly on art stuff).

And that's just peanuts compared to other stuff our government spends money on, our healthcare system is beyond broken, forcing you to pay government healthcare insurance (deducted by your employer, at 14.92% of your gross pay + 37.5eur extra, around 5keur yearly per average worker) but when you need an ultrasound for possible kidney stones... well, the waiting times are 6 month, but if you pay out of your pocket for a private clinic, somewhere around 100 eur, you can get one today or at the latest, tomorrow. If you're sick for up to 28 days, your employer covers your sick pay (80% of normal pay), if longer than 28 days, the government pays for that... sounds ok, right? We have people on sick leave for two, three years (24-36months * 80% of ~2500eur average monthly gross) waiting for eg. a knee surgery, that costs 3-5k eur at a private clinic, even less at a government one, but because our government insurance decided to pay only for 20 such surgeries yearly, and the waiting line is 70 people, you're screwed.

So yeah, I don't trust the government. I trust an average homeless alcoholic more with money management, especially because he's operating with his own money for his own benefit, and he'll make sure to get the most booze for whatever he managed to gather and not spend more than he has.

You’re obviously educated and on HN, so you can appreciate how much harder showing causation is.

Sadly, that does mean, the citizens need to get together and make their system more trustworthy. Getting more money in the hands of workers will not result in a better overall system.

Or in simpler terms - Distrust in the government is the enemy, and all the factors that cause it, real and perceived. Corruption, weak information economies, weakened judiciaries, depleted citizen capacity to build consensus.

We need those systems to work.

The government has the monopoly on violence. We pay the government, we pay the people that should check that they didn't do anything bad/wrong (police, anti-corruption services, etc.), we pay the court system, but they don't do anything. Things that work in every corporation (eg. procurement offices and oversight over them) are broken in many if not all governments, including ours.

If the government wants trust, then they must earn it. So far they haven't. And I'm talking about the whole pyramid, from the top politicians, to the lowest traffic police officer not doing his/her job. And in the system where a politician steals money, the investigators dont investigate and the courts don't prosecute, we can reduce the money they get, because they obviously are not doing the jobs we are paying them for. Jail 10, 20 politicians, and I'll gladly support more investigators (paid by the taxpayers). If they don't, we don't need the ones we already have.

Either way, no one is coming to save you, other than your own ability to understand the system, its tolerances, and to effect change / build alliances.

You can even achieve this by doing something small, like cleaning up a local spot, or other parts of your daily routine.

We learn how to operate very complex systems regularly.