That reminds me of the economist (William Baumol)  who told the composer dean of Juilliard (William Schumann) that he had no complaints as a composer since he had a job as a teacher. (Of course did America have complaints as a culture since we lost so much of his talent to the supposed good of caring for the young). 

In the 1930s that spin made Richard Strauss so mad that he joined Hitler for a time because he promised full employment for performing artists.    But then Strauss couldn't abide his solution, which was to fire the Jewish artists and replace them with non-Jews.   I would suggest a read in the Michael Kater "Twisted Muse, Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich" for a little perspective on the "spin" that you used.

Being a musician is a full time job whether paid or not and angry artists are often quite destructive.   Since they control the mirrors they often contain a destruction that is truly genocidal all in the name of their own view of the world "winning" a kind of artistic 'losing."

REH

Tom Walker wrote:

To put another spin on this one:

Samuelson would say that Ray Harrell is suffering from the lump-of-opera
illusion -- that is the fallacy that there is only a fixed amount of opera
and that by spreading the parts around more artists could be employed.
History clearly shows that this is a fallacy. New operas are being written
and performed every day and the recording industry has created thousands of
new jobs (some of them very well payed!) for every live performing artist
job that has been eliminated. The artists who are thrown out of work by
technological advancement may have to relocate and accept a lower rate of
pay. But with their vocal training they would be readily absorbed into the
expanding field of telemarketing. With the incomes that they receive from
work in a call centre, these former artists would be able to buy CDs and
opera tickets, thus expanding the aggregate demand for opera and perhaps
even enabling some of them to resume their artistic careers.

Tom Walker
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/

 

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