I said
e.g. an operatic part at the Metropolitan costs tops $19,000 per
performance. While the
same part in Vienna can double that. Why is it worth more
in Vienna than here? It
has nothing to do with its inherent value as a major part of a great
work of art. It has
to do with the story that the Citizens of Vienna have about the
place of art in the
propagation of their quality as both a culture and a people and
the place that the work
occupies in communication with their history and the lives of their
ancestors.
In a private post one of the members asked if this had anything to do with more money available for labor costs in the arts in Vienna as a result of more affluence. I don't have last year's Austrian GDP but the 94 per capita was $ 22,000 about the same as the U.S. for the same year. In Italy, Germany and the UK the per capita at that time was about the same or less than the U.S.
Today in America, the people who have the money to support the arts
are such a small minority of the country that ticket prices must be kept
at an artificially low cost for people like myself to be able to afford
to go, and most of the time I can't afford it. (if we don't go,
those huge grand opera houses will be half empty which sets up another
whole group of political problems around the alleged "elitism" of the arts
in America by the "black velvet tiger paintings" crowd.)
So forty percent of the costs of productions are born by private contributions.
Can you imagine forty percent of ITT being paid for by contributions or
running 40% in the red, (so to speak).
But this raises another issue for me on this list. Why is it that
whenever you guys and gals
talk about work you "basically" are still talking 19th century manufacturing
"hired hands" or "commodities" labor instead of the 18th and
now late 20th century "intellectual project oriented skills"?
Is this an issue still of the bias towards "real estate" as the only true capital base? I would dispute this considering that until recently America's largest and most profitable export was arts and entertainment (movies) that is purely intellectual capital or maybe more accurately "virtual capital." Of course the movies have the highest labor costs, along with professional sports of any profession in the country. I think the theoretical base for this amongst economists thus far is pretty shoddy and old fashioned. Talk to me.
REH
