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.

I do a lot of things as an amateur but at pretty high level: athletics, music, art and more. I also pay a huge portion of my income as a software developer in direct and indirect taxation. Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on things where they can't make a living, the same things I love to do but realize can't be your sole pursuit.

You've conflated people busting ass who can't keep up with those following their passion in the arts voluntarily. Those don't feel anything like the same thing to me. I don't think I'm alone in a perspective that if you keep taking more from me I'll stop contributing all together, and we'll all fail. The ultra-rich and others with means to avoid picking up the tab have already done so.

> Convince me I should fund people to focus full-time on things where they can't make a living, the same things I love to do but realize can't be your sole pursuit.

You already are, it's just going to the ultra wealthy and pension fund kids, while you slave your life away making that stock go up because you believe there should be no other choice.

So why not have the worker get/keep more of his money, instead of giving it to a different group of "others"?

Because the taxi driver could keep all of his money and still wouldn't make very much.

Sure, but he'd make more if he wasn't taxed so much.

In my country, from the customer to the persons net paycheck, a bit over half goes to the government (vat, 2x different benefits, income tax).

Every time someone mentiones taxes, the rich and the poor over here, the average (ie. people earning around average income) get taxed more, the rich on paper earn nothing, and the poor get taxed the same (because there's nothing more to take).

I'd much prefer a system where an average joe would pay a lower percantage of taxes (ie. a tax break), and people like bezos would actually get taxed at the same rate instead of paying zero throug loopholes).