Culture Crash: The Killing of the Creative Class

 Between 2008 and September 2012, there were 66 No. 1 songs, almost half of which were performed by only six artists (Katy Perry, Rihanna, Flo Rida, The Black Eyed Peas, Adele, and Lady Gaga); in 2011, Adele’s debut album sold more than 70 percent of all classical albums combined, and more than 60 percent of all jazz albums. Between 1982 and 2002, the number of Americans reading fiction withered by nearly 30 percent. In a 1966 UCLA study, 86 percent of students across the country declared that they intended to have a “meaningful philosophy of life”; by 2013, that percentage was amputated by half, “meaningful” no doubt replaced by “moneyful.”

Reading Reflections:
Art and Economics
This was a very interesting article for me on an economics and art perspective. Ignoring the creative minds happening in North America is similar to the ones happening in Asia, most art is seen as traditional and no longer hold creative thinking processes as they are seen as tourism opportunities. The young are not taught to think and create but to solve math and understand theories of science. I am not saying that they are different but I believe that they should compliment each other. It is undeniable that income as the economy grows in China, more middle class appears but the rich only get richer as in the U.S. An interesting article "America's New Aristocracy" from the economist last months shows how the rich are just getting richer not because of physical assets but brains and power of the pen (or keyboard). 
The problem here is that they are also often more appreciative of the arts, sure we can measure SAT scores and GPA but I would be interested to see the correlation between their creative minds and those of less opportunity. 

Get a REAL JOB


Scott Timbert also talks briefly about about

We spent a generation (or more) cutting funding for the arts in school.  Students are not exposed to art, do not learn to understand or appreciate art.  We have no money for field trips; no trips to museums or the symphony or plays or the opera.  We spent a generation cutting or not filling staff positions for GATE classes.  We spend a generation teaching to pass the annual proficiency test.  Kids do not learn to reason and think critically.  We spent a generation cutting federal and state funding for the arts.  Too bad, NPR and PBS.  We spent a generation dumbing down programming so that the History Channel and TLC present pseudo-scientific conspiracy theory as fact, so that faux archeologists present as fact a tenuous string of questionable conclusions.  We spent a generation taking away science and political analysis magazines from the checkout stand and replacing them with fashion, thinspiration, shallow gossip rags.  We spent a generation shrinking the strong middle class, cutting their support from patronizing art programs and the ability to contribute where government funding has fallen off.  We spent a generation making college so expensive that a liberal arts education is an unaffordable frivolity, forgoing a broader education for a target tech school education in hopes of being able to survive.  We spent a generation allowing religious creation myth and questionable dogma creep into our children's textbooks to be presented as fact alongside with altered history, no longer to be taught as a background cultural influence of war but as a means of justifying the class warfare boot oppressing the masses.  We spent a generation or more of growing corporations buying media and broadcasting and narrowing choices to a trickle of candy apple or candy apple programming.  We have abandoned in-depth reporting of newspapers in exchange for sound bites, 30-second news broadcasts, blurbs at the bottom of the screen. 

We have cut off our own arms and legs, fellow citizens.  We have placed our own head on the chopping block.

We have allowed this to happen.


The paintings, unloved, returned to the houses of the rich, who of course still exist, because they are the ones who can afford them and appreciate them.  The symphonies, the ballets, the opera houses close, starved of the support of a culture who no longer sees value in something they have not been given the chance to appreciate.  The "successful" artists are mange-ridden anemic beasts of burden sucked dry by corporate parasites.