[tomgp]

In Britain it’s noticeable that as unemployment benefit and social housing has been stripped back the proportion of people from working class backgrounds with careers in the arts has declined. The most visible example of this is probably actors; pretty much all the current generation of British actors went to public school and were able to support themselves via family wealth as they became established. This wasn’t the case for the generation coming through in the 70s and 80s. The underlying cause is that if you can’t subsist as you learn your craft you can’t learn your craft, I don’t think this is mysterious.

This doesn’t just apply to the arts, if all junior dev roles are stripped away by llm’s where do the talented developers of tomorrow come from? Those who can learn the craft on their own time, those with independent wealth.

At a societal level there is a huge amount of potential talent being left on the table, and imo redistributive policies are the obvious fix. In think this is really important both from a mortal point of view and an economically pragmatic one.

[ralferoo]

The real question then is why the "professionals" in these fields are able to command such massive incomes, and why people are prepared to pay multiple hundreds to watch their favourite singer but won't drop into a free gig at an open mic night. Why some footballers can can earn millions per week, and the lower tiers of the sport are paid so little. Why top actors can earn more from one film than even most doctors or lawyers will earn in their lifetime, while other decent actors spend their entire careers working as an extra, etc...

Clearly everyone can see that the system is "unfair" in almost every industry, so the question is why does everybody perpetuate this system. It seems to be that by and large, people are prepared to pay more to get more of whatever they consider "the best" and they care much less about everything else in that space.

But shift the focus away from people and to products - why are so many people willing to pay over $1000 for the latest iPhone, when they already have the previous year's phone, and a $100 phone probably does 90% of what they need.

Again, it's because people want the best they can afford, and so the market increases the price to the point that maximises the product of price and people prepared to pay that price. Sadly, for the aspiring musician that hasn't been scouted yet, the price is low and even then not many people are prepared to pay it. This is why we have record labels who scout for talent, front them some money up front, handle publicity and building an audience, hoping that one of their 100+ artists might make enough that they can pay for the rest and still make a profit.

[giantg2]

This has nothing to do with subsisting while learning your craft. This is about a supply and demand difference and the inequality in entertainment roles. If you have too many actors, then the nobodies get paid next to nothing while the famous people get the lion's share. And many of those nobodies never make even close to earning a living because the supply side is saturated and the demand side doesn't want to pay for that art. You have to have buyers.

[MrJohz]

Class in this context is referring to the actors' backgrounds, i.e. parental incomes, rather than their own income. There is an issue if you have to be born to a rich family in order to take on a career like acting, and right now, at least based on the evidence, that appears to be true: you need a sufficient safety net to be able to survive for a long time on basically no income while you practice and work low-paying gigs until you finally break through. For some people that just isn't possible.

A social safety net means that more people have the ability to try out risky careers - not necessarily that more of them will succeed, but that the pool of applicants will be larger and include a wider proportion of the population.