Passage A

What public interest is served by an earmarked tax for the arts? This is a most important question, for unless the public interest is somehow served, proponents of arts subsidies will be hard pressed to justify the transfer of money from taxpayers in general to those who happen to enjoy attending cultural events that would be eligible for such funding. It is not enough to claim that the range of organizations receiving public funding will be large and attract diverse audiences: this leaves unanswered the question of why the arts should not be funded exclusively through the private sector.

But public support of the arts is, in fact, eminently justifiable. Left to the private sector alone, opportunities to share in a region's cultural life will not be distributed equitably. Individuals who simply do not have the money, or those who live in regions with few cultural offerings, will miss out on an important part of a full life.

Arts events and institutions in a community also build social capital: the invisible, informal ties that bind our society together. By enhancing opportunities for citizens to get together, especially in amateur cultural organizations where they are participants rather than spectators, we build the social capital that is an essential determinant of a region's quality of life. Those who participate frequently in arts and cultural events are far more likely to engage in other civic activities, such as voting and volunteer work.

Passage B

Tax-funded arts subsidies admittedly provide some incidental benefits, such as increasing tourism. Yet a justification for such subsidies must show the direct benefit of spending taxpayers' money on things the taxpayers themselves would not have chosen. It must show that subsidies will enable many more people to enjoy works of art that are decidedly better than art that is privately funded.

Yet even if we could guarantee better art, it is doubtful that we could guarantee more widespread aesthetic enjoyment. Art that is subsidized generally will not be the art that most taxpayers would have chosen for themselves. Subsidized art generally reflects the tastes, not of popular audiences, but of selection committees that distribute government money. Most people will therefore get what they don't like.

Moreover, culture is not like national defense: a public good that must be available to everyone if it is available to anyone. I can't buy my own defense policy, but I can buy my own aesthetic experiences. Nor can income level justify cultural subsidies. It may be that, if I had more money, I would spend it on aesthetic experiences. By this logic, perhaps we should augment incomes to enable all people, if they so choose, to buy art they select themselves. But it is wrong for government to choose for people the art works and cultural events it considers they should have. We must respect all people as equal individuals, capable of making their own choices. For these reasons, there can be no justification for arts subsidies.