BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'

Subject: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 08:20 PM

I have been fascinated for years by this phrase.

It surfaces all the time in the tabloid newspapers in the UK, ( but is by no means unknown in the US )

The most recent manifestation ( on Mudcat even, as well as the tabloids ) was in regard to Myra Hindley, where the "Cost to the Taxpayer" of maintaining her was "however" many pounds per annum.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but is it not the case that we (ie UK ) maintain an establishment of prison service officers who would have been employed whether or not Myra Hindley had beeen incarcerated ? If they hadn't been looking after Hindley they would have been occupied elswhere. So how does her incarceration "cost" X thousand pounds ? The money would have been spent anyway.

I am SO reminded of a passage in one of the GREAT books of our time, "The Science of Chance" by Dr Horace C Levinson, wherein the good doctor assesses the claims of some New York tabloid newspaper that the habit of secretaries in NY City of taking an exxtra five minutes for their liunch was somehow costing the US economy " X" million dollars per annum.

The "Cost to the Taxpayer" is going to surface again (and again) ad nauseam, during the current firefighter's strike, for sure.

Murray

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 09:13 PM

Economists use the term "marginal cost" - meaning the additional cost that any particular extra "unit" costs. Most of the time it's very low, compared to the cost you'd come up with if you divided the total expenses up between all the "units".

If you have to employ an extra person to provide the extra input it'll be hgher than if you can just redeploy people who'd be employed in any case.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 09:31 PM

Of course, "the cost to the tax payer" is usually only calculated by proponents of whichever side of an argument proposes to "save the taxpayer money". It is commonly used as an argument in favor of the death penalty in the U.S., it being cheaper to execute someone than to maintain them in prison for many years....yada....yada....yada.....

Sounds like it's time for another one of "Bruce's Simplistic Solutions"!

I am against the death penalty, not because I see it as a cruel form of punishment, but because it lets notorious criminals off too easy. They get to just check out and go on to whatever comes after this life while the survivors of their victims have to live the rest of their lives in pain. I think that notorious criminals should be kept in public exhibition areas that the public pays admission to visit. Nothing medieval - no spitting or stoning - just soundproof glass-walled cells in a special wing of the prison. If the State of Florida had kept Ted Bundy alive and were charging people ten bucks a pop to take a look at him the "cost to the taxpayer" would be nada and ole Ted would actually be turning a substantial profit for the state.

Don'tcha just hate it when the first post in response to a thread topic amounts to thread creep?

Bruce

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Sorcha
Date: 17 Nov 02 - 10:29 PM

Do we get to watch them take a crap, or pray to the Great Commode God? I have read that it actually is more expensive (at least in US) to execute a prisoner than to incarcerate for life, because of the long appeals process.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 12:10 AM

Not to pick on the Tate - but we were speaking of "crap" and this "perfect example" of the use of the phrase comes from an article, "The Nincompoop Prize," by John Derbyshire - a gentleman I don't know but would really find it agreeable to meet:

"The Turner prize, in case you don't know, is one of the most prestigious art awards in the western world, given every year by London's Tate Gallery for a body of work whose creator has demonstrated outstanding ability and originality. The winner then chooses an item to put on display. The prize is worth £20,000 (about $30,000). This year's award went to 33-year-old Martin Creed for an exhibit that consisted of an empty room with lights that flicker on and off every five seconds. Mr. Creed's previous exhibits include a scrunched-up sheet of plain typing paper, a piece of plasticine stuck to a wall, and neon signs bearing cheery messages. The award was presented Tuesday night by Madonna.
...

"What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method. Then the Tate Gallery should be reduced to rubble by aerial bombardment, the rubble carted away to be used as landfill, and the ground sown with salt. Then the fools who pay good money to look at this "art" should be packed into boxcars and tipped off the white cliffs of Dover, and their mangled corpses left to be feasted on by dogs, crows and crabs.

"Oh, all right: In a free country, people should be left alone to ingest dog poop, if that's what they want to do. Cancel the boxcars. I do think, though, that the fact of a worthless fraud like Mr. Creed being able to attain fame and fortune with his absurd "works of art" should make anyone who cares about our civilization cringe and weep. It is all very well to say that people should be able to do what they like with their money (which seems nowadays to include your money and my money, too: "art" everywhere is heavily subsidized from taxation). But public awards like the Turner Prize are not private matters. They are statements that we (we, this culture; we, this civilization) make about ourselves, to the world and to posterity. The statement being made this week by the Turner Prize judges is: "We are a culture of driveling nincompoops, who would not know real talent, skill and inspiration if they whacked us over the head with a loaded pool cue." To drive home the point, to add insult to injury, they delegated the prize-giving to Madonna, a talentless self-promoter, the very epitome of everything trashy, stupid, dirty, meretricious (look up the etymology), mindless and antisocial in our godforsaken culture.

...
"'There's one born every minute,' said P. T. Barnum. On hearing which, his assistant enquired: 'But where do all the rest of them come from?'"

Full text at The Nincompoop Prize

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 02:59 AM

"What do I think about all this? Well, first I think that the directors of the Tate Gallery, which receives funding from general taxation, should be locked up in prison and made to do hard labor scraping the rust off bolts for 20 years or so with nothing to eat but cold oatmeal porridge. Then I think Mr. Creed should be stripped naked, sprayed all over with bright blue paint, and made to run round and round Piccadilly Circus until he drops from exhaustion, after which he should be killed by some not-very-humane method.

No. Don't kill him... stick him to the wall of my office block foyer, we could use some cheering up - the whole thing has has the pretty marble facing stripped off and painted white. There are blue, grey and purple hangings, the whole thing is pathetically enhanced by a single crazed glass panel that lights different shades of blue and purple, depending on the whim of the regulator. Otherwise, it's huge expanses (something like 30ft X 50ft) of white walls. There are vain attempts to cheer it up with some VERY expensive flower arrangements (Strelitzia Reginae at £15 a stem) which just look like a very colourful flea on an elephants' bum.

He'd look good up there and he could watch taxpayers come and go.. They could be provided with a paintball gun (loaded with a nice contrasting orange) and could liven up the rest of the wall by taking pot shots at him.

My taxes pay for lots of things I don't agree with.... but if I didn't pay them, it would always be the hospitals, the teachers, the firefighters and the roads that would suffer. Harold Shipman's quality of life wouldn't alter a bit, because he has more rights and protection now he's behind bars and supposedly being punished than if he were still a GP in practice.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 03:37 AM

Gee Liz - sounds like you've got a real talent for this modern art thing. Nice decoration.

We've been going through a long period in which almost every statement made by a politician - state, county, or local - begins and/or ends with "if we don't raise taxes the schools will suffer."

I want a wall hanging that consists of a copy of our state budget, with each line item endorsed by every politician's signed statement that "I agree that this item is more important than support for schools," since they all are unanimous that the only thing that will suffer (if we don't accept higher taxes) is the school budget.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Troll
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 05:27 AM

I can see no reason why the talentless Mr. Creed should vilified.
He simply presented what HE considered art in a public forum. It's the blithering cretins who AWARDEDhimthe prize that I would take issue with. Especially since it was public money that they used.
It appears obvious to me that the august experts at the Tate have a less than flattering opinion of the taxpayer. Let them, therefore, raise the money for the prizes they so grandeloquently present by subscription from among their fellow "art" lovers.
Let 'em raise money for their salaries too.

troll

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 08:39 AM

Troll - I think you've actually hit on the point of the article I cited.

Perhaps the biggest failure of the Tate in awarding their prize to Mr. Creed was their failure to recognize him as a very run-of-the-mill representative of the talentless - but greedy - crop of those pretending to be "artists." If his work actually was "exceptional" it might merit some sort of recognition - but there is a sad "sameness" to most of what the "art industry" applauds today.

I'm told that there are only a few more than 80,000 original Picasso's in circulation, while some of these guys turn out a new "creation" almost every day.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: mack/misophist
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 11:15 AM

5 or 8 years ago, I heard a radio program on which one of the art experts from Sotheby's explained how that sort of thing works. According to him, most of the people who present these egregious "works of art" are younger males who have come to realize that the real profits for artists come from people who are investing and have no love for, interest in, or understanding of art itself. Thus, once one of these persons becomes "bankable" the urge to produce high priced shit becomes well nigh irresistable. His point was that many of these people have talent and skill but that it's worthless if they want some real money.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From:
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 02:46 PM

We've got some serious thread-creep here...but why not? People in folk arts should be especially wary of mediagenic abuses offered by race-to-the-bottom politicians to a public eager to be told their tax dollars (pounds, euros) are being squandered. In the US, the rationale that art has public value and should have public support is being eroded by "commonsensical" arguments that, if it's worth anything, the marketplace will take care of it (Wilde: "An American knows the price of everything and the value of nothing."). These pols get a lot of mileage out of publicizing deliberately offensive, zero-skill things like Serrano's "Piss Christ" as well as highly-skilled but offensive-to-the-mainstream things like Mapplethorpe's photos. What they do not say is that the majority of public funding for the arts goes to provide very limited assistance to small-scale endeavors with much broader appeal (but little potential for self-sustainability in an economy that depends on mass-marketing, copyright benefits and the profit-motive). I'm on a grants-panel with a measly couple hundred thou a year to give away, and we spend it all on people who practice and can teach others to stitch traditional designs in boots, make damascus steel knives, call square-dances, carve santos, things like that. When someone lays down a fiery factoid, it's good to ask yourself what the inference they're asking you to draw might be, and whether the generalization they're implying is valid.

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: M.Ted
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 09:54 PM

Have you seen the art in question? Best not to judge by derisive, second hand descriptions--

Even still, the Tate is not to everyone's taste, which is why you can still find affordable prints of "American Gothic" if you are willing to seek them out--

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: mg
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 10:15 PM

I read an interview by a famous (so they said) artist talking about our taxes for art in new construction projects. Some of them are OK and some are just awful to the untrained eye, like mine. But the artist had a brilliant idea..he said it is public money...let the public choose the art. Then he went on to say it would all be leaping dolphins but what the heck. mg

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: JohnInKansas
Date: 18 Nov 02 - 10:15 PM

M. Ted

There are web images representative of the art (not limited to this one work) described in the cited article. Few of us can go to the Tate, but this - and similar - "art" is fairly frequently exhibited in the "traveling sideshows" at galleries virtually everywhere. It is not an "unknown," and can be reasonably judged by persons of other than the most defective intelligence.

Guest adavis -

I can sympathize with your sensitivity to an attack on public funding of support for "the arts;" but no such attack was intended, either in the article I originally cited, or by me in my post. The article is an example of the "cost to the taxpayer" argument, attached to the furtherance of an "agenda," although the "cost" argument is not actually emphasized if taken in the context of the whole article.

(The article is 5 "page downloads" long, so I'm not surprised that apparently noone has read the whole thing. The lead subject is actually pretty mild compared to some later examples it contains.)

It is not too surprising that those responding have seen, and responded to, the "agenda" rather than to the original "academic question" about "how people argue." (It is not surprising that several responses actually "use" - at least by reference - "the method" in question.)

The agenda advanced in the article is that what the "art dictator$" have been calling "art" is not ART, and that the wrong people are "in charge." (My own definition of what passes for "art" now would have to include the term "pathological personality defects," although its uncertain whether it applies more to the artists than to the sellers. I'd discount the buyers as stupidity with too much money, since obviously having no "taste" of their own, they're only following the advice of the dealers.)

An obvious corollary to the agenda is that money spent wrongly is taken from worthwhile uses. There is extensive "editorializing" on this "agenda" at the parent site for the article: http://www.artrenewal.org/ (Articles and Speeches) that might be useful in your own competition for support (and funding) if you're "politician" enough to incorporate some of it into your work. (And I accept that it's probably distasteful to think that way.)

The usual "cost of" argument consists of picking something you don't like, and inventing a way to show that it is very expensive, in order to get people to agree to get rid of it. (Punch line - and give that amount of money to you.)

My own local politicians have done it one better with picking something everyone feels is necessary, and claiming a high cost for it to justify increasing taxes. "Proper support for our schools will require a tax increase next year."

The only problem I have with this is that the amount purportedly needed by the entire state ($1 - $2 million increase would probably do) is less than my local politicians have committed to "one local pork project." I have not heard one yet say "We can fund the schools without raising taxes, but we'll need to raise taxes to pay for the $6.8 million 'downtown beautification' that our 6 or 7 already wealthy downtown landowners really want."

In auctions (e.g. Sotheby's) the past couple of years: Picasso's down 30%, Bouguereau's and Alma-Tadema's up x300. It's about time.

John

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From:
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 10:35 AM

I sensed no attack. But in my (red)neck of the woods, that phrase is the starting-point of an argument that always leads to the same place: "lookawha the (fill in your favorite scare-group here) are doing with your money." So I respond to the philosophy that seems always to stand behind the phrase, at least when it's used here, and what seems to me a slightly out-of-whack sense of the public good. But I'm just one of those who chooses butter over guns, at least outside of emergencies. Matter of fact, I'd choose pictures of butter, songs about butter. I recall a t-shirt: "It'll be a great day when schools are buying ten-thousand dollar coffeepots and the air force has to hold a bake sale to build a bomb."

Adam

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Willie-O
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 10:53 AM

The phrase "cost to the taxpayer" is often used with no thought, it's just part of the language that is often meaningless.

For example, in Ontario liquor stores are owned by one of our few remaining "Crown Corporations", and thus are making a lot of money FOR the taxpayers. Naturally, our neo-con government wants to privatize them and make some capitalists happy by giving away this golden goose. Part of their persuasion campaign is to say "Public money shouldn't be used to build new liquor stores", as if it was coming right out of our pockets, and is some kind of moral values issue to boot. Which is stupid of course.

We used to have a mixed economy that worked fairly well. Government participated in various profit-making enterprises, or subsidized them in the lean years. This is one of the few remaining vestiges of that, one which they have kept because it earns them (us, the taxpayers) lots of revenue, both from the profit and the sales taxes. Just the kind of thing the new-cons don't care to discuss.

Willie-O

Subject: RE: BS: 'The Cost to the Taxpayer'
From: Pied Piper
Date: 19 Nov 02 - 11:39 AM

Bearing in mind that in the UK we pay 17% Vat on everything other than un-cooked food, we're all tax payers even those that receive benefits.
PP