[CalRobert]

The frustrating thing about this program is that it is not possible to avail of this unless you are ALREADY an artist. So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.

The only person I know getting this money was already semi-retired after selling their house in London and retiring to the Irish countryside, and basically just noodles around on the guitar now and then.

[fiftyacorn]

Id commented on reddit a few weeks back that this type of scheme sounds great - but ends up being taken up by middle/upper classes as a bit of pocket money, and doesnt widen the pool or access to arts

The UK has this with lottery funding for athletes - it started really positive - but is now a lottery funded gap year for private school kids

[s_dev]

>The frustrating thing about this program is that it is not possible to avail of this unless you are ALREADY an artist.

Correct, the programme is FOR artists. How could this possibly work otherwise? By somebody stating they intend to become an talented artist?

How else would you gauge merit if not through their portfolio of prior work?

[wooger]

Everyone is capable of creating art.

We're not objectively deciding what is art and what isn't, up front. Who decides what counts? Who's to say an AI generated self-published vomit novels on Amazon aren't as valid as anything else.

[PepperdineG]

If someone was in college this could be a way for them to get going right after they graduate without having to take some other non-art job instead.

[PakistaniDenzel]

If they didn't have this restriction everyone would suddenly be an "artist" and would claim the money.

[joe_mamba]

If a system is based on a userbase pulling the ladder from under them in order to make sure only they can benefit from it, then it's not a good or fair system from the get go.

Maybe the issue is with the definition of the profession of artist, that's it's too vague and fluid allowing anyone to claim to be one without much hassle.

But then if you have a strict definition of the artist profession, everyone will rush to conform to the bare minimum of that in order to score those benefits.

So maybe then the core issue is with the welfare state that unfairly picks winners and losers instead of being "universal".

Artist have exited way before the welfare state has. They were poor and had patrons who supported them if they loved their work. So then why do we need the state to subsidize this now? Do we have proof this leads to higher quality art?

[shiandow]

Oh no!

Seriously though, having a basic income that is not basic was bound to give issues.

[krisoft]

> The frustrating thing about this program is that it is not possible to avail of this unless you are ALREADY an artist.

Frankly we don’t know the selection criteria for the program this year. It will be only released in April.

But we know the selection criteria for the pilot program, and for that this was not true.

> So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.

Again we don’t know the full program’s eligibility criteria yet. Under the pilot program there were two separate streams. Those who were recently trained, and those who were “practicing artist”.

Your hypothetical “artist who gave up art” might fall into the “recently trained” stream and thus be eligible.

Or if they gave up on art a long ago (more than 5 years), there are ways they can get back to it. They can start practicing their art on the side again, produce a portfolio of work and thus become eligible again. They don’t need to be full time artist for this.

> The only person I know getting this money

In the pilot program they randomly selected 2000 participants from those who where eligible. So to get the money in the pilot program you both needed to be eligible, have applied for it, and be lucky enough in the lottery.

Because of this lottery whoever is getting it today is not representative of who is all eligible for it.

[Azrael3000]

Additionally i would argue that in every such programm there will be people that abuse the system. Just because gp knows one such person, does not mean that everybody will be doing that.

The article also mentions that overall the program had a positive impact.

[george11119]

i swear I've seen this comment about a guy who sold his house and getting basic income before

edit: found it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45590900#45591439

[y7]

That's also CalRobert's post, so it refers to the same person.

[keepamovin]

> So if you gave up art because you had bills and kids and needed to support yourself or a family, you're SOL.

Lacks real courage. Not committed. Next!

[specialist]

Becoming a working artist requires sacrifice and commitment.

Joshua Citarella (Doomscroll podcast) often talks about the practicalities of producing art.

In 1970's a (starving) artist worked part-time job (eg waiter), enabling them to focus on their craft most of the week.

Today, typical artist has to hustle, juggling 3 jobs, and can only focus once per week on their one day off work.

Further, "entry level" jobs are unpaid / underpaid. Such as internships at a museum or newspaper. Ditto teaching positions.

Consequently, only affluent persons are able to break into the creative disciplines (production of culture). Trust funds, nepotism, and other lottery winners.

--

I, for one, enthusiastically support heavily subsidizing both creative and caring work. All those "not-for-profit" gigs and unpaid labor. They're the grease that keeps society working. Despite not being tabulated in someone's payroll accounting system.