Cowen Good and Plenty

The Creative Successes of American Arts Funding
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2700-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

Americans agree about government arts funding in the way the women in the old joke agree about the food at the wedding: it's terrible--and such small portions! Americans typically either want to abolish the National Endowment for the Arts, or they believe that public arts funding should be dramatically increased because the arts cannot survive in the free market. It would take a lover of the arts who is also a libertarian economist to bridge such a gap. Enter Tyler Cowen. In this book he argues why the U.S. way of funding the arts, while largely indirect, results not in the terrible and the small but in Good and Plenty--and how it could result in even more and better.

Few would deny that America produces and consumes art of a quantity and quality comparable to that of any country. But is this despite or because of America's meager direct funding of the arts relative to European countries? Overturning the conventional wisdom of this question, Cowen argues that American art thrives through an ingenious combination of small direct subsidies and immense indirect subsidies such as copyright law and tax policies that encourage nonprofits and charitable giving. This decentralized and even somewhat accidental--but decidedly not laissez-faire--system results in arts that are arguably more creative, diverse, abundant, and politically unencumbered than that of Europe.

Bringing serious attention to the neglected issue of the American way of funding the arts, Good and Plenty is essential reading for anyone concerned about the arts or their funding.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Cowen, Tyler

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Non-Profit-Organisationen, Verbände

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments vii

Chapter 1: Warring Perspectives 1

Chapter 2: Indirect Subsidies:

The Genius of the American System 31

Chapter 3: Direct Subsidies: Are They Too Conservative? 65

Chapter 4: Copyright and the Future of Decentralized Incentives 101

Chapter 5: Toward a Beautiful and Liberal Future 133

Notes 153

References 169

Index 189

Über Autor(innen)

Tyler Cowen is professor of economics at George Mason University. His books include Creative Destruction (Princeton) and Create Your Own Economy. He frequently writes for the New York Times, Slate, and the economics blog Marginal Revolution.