In a move sure to make many in the arts cheer, Prime Minister Brown launches a new program to help arts “graduates break into showbusiness“. According to BBC News, “The Creative Bursaries Scheme is designed to help graduates secure what would otherwise be unpaid internships.”

So, what is it that will keep these talented artists in fiscally viable positions once their paid internships run out? Does the availability of government-sponsored internships have any historical correlation to the availability of long-term life-sustaining work in an artist’s chosen field? As I’m sure we all know, talent is no guarantee of a payoff in life or in the arts. I’m sure any of us can point to dozens of supremely talented colleagues that have not yet gotten the lucky break they deserve so much. At the same time we could point to supremely financially well-off artists whose level of talent leaves much to be desired. (A coloratura who pointed to the ceiling each time she hit a high-E in a Michigan Opera Theatre production of Die Zauberflote comes to mind.)

Could these paid internships be sending the signal that a life in the arts is not only super fun, but more affordable than it really is?

I would say so. As I argued in my recent post, subsidizing an otherwise already desirable activity means you will get more people wanting to do that activity, not less. Even subsidizing less desirable activities (like low income home-buying) means you’ll get more of it (and more of the supposedly unforeseen and unintended consequences). This is public policy 101.

Furthermore, compensating differentials ensures the arts market will always be flooded with shiny, happy, eager labor – subsidy or not. Just ask any dozen or thousand fledgling sopranos looking for work if they would like to sing at Covent Garden for free. Don’t you think they would all beg, borrow, and steal to make sure they were on that stage? Do you think they would consider themselves as being exploited? Perhaps after a certain amount of time, but the evil, evil market would ensure that at some point, no soprano would be willing to sing for free forever. That is, unless she was Florence Foster Jenkins.

To quote Professor and Economist Bryan Caplan, from his econ syllabus,

A. Do people always choose the highest-paying occupation open to them?  No.  “Man does not live by bread alone.”

B. Conversely, does everyone refuse to do the truly miserable jobs (like garbage man)?  No.

C. Easy to analyze this using S&D: the funner the job, the more labor supply increases; the more horrible the job, the more labor supply decreases.

(And yes, this is the theoretical textbook effect, and yes, this is keeping all things constant.) So when subsidy is thrown into the mix, i.e. Fun Job with Higher Wage Than What the Market Demands – everyone gets really excited about it and compensating differentials ensures a steadily increasing stream of labor to the newly subsidized arts market.

As far as I can see it, there are roughly two sides of the argument. One says, “Good for the artists that get the jobs and the government probably should subsidize more. No worries about the other effects, as long as some people are better off.” The other, “A life in the arts is hard. That’s about it. No amount of subsidy will permanently change the labor market. The more you subsidize, the more enticing it becomes, and the steady stream of unemployed artist hopefuls will just keep rising.”