I wasn’t talking about subsidization, I was talking about taxation. The logic of the discussion was as follows: (1) Johnicolas said there should be an art tax; (2) I said “how would you do that?”; (3) wedrifid said “subject art to standard sales taxes”; (4) I pointed out that art already is subject to standard sales taxes—so far as I know it isn’t specifically exempt; hence wedrifid’s response doesn’t work as an answer.
The part of wedrifid’s comment that I quoted defined the scope of my remark, which you misunderstood.
Any meaningful discussion of taxation focuses on the net, not on arbitrary subdivisions and labels. If art were taxed at 50% sales tax but also came with a tax deduction of 100%, I would feel real physical pain to see someone argue ‘oh, but we are discouraging and taxing heavily artwork! Just look at that 50%!’
Which is why I bring up the subsidies. If art is being hugely subsidized, then just being taxed like everything else (in your impoverished sense) still leads to art being cheaper than it should.
That may or may not be a fair point to make, but in that case your comment should have begun with “Yes, but...” instead of “No...”.
On the merits, I disagree on every point: that there is too much art, that current art subsidies are “heavy”, and that art subsidies necessarily cancel out sales taxes for the purpose of interpreting government policy (which may simply be incoherent and non-uniform).
I wasn’t talking about subsidization, I was talking about taxation. The logic of the discussion was as follows: (1) Johnicolas said there should be an art tax; (2) I said “how would you do that?”; (3) wedrifid said “subject art to standard sales taxes”; (4) I pointed out that art already is subject to standard sales taxes—so far as I know it isn’t specifically exempt; hence wedrifid’s response doesn’t work as an answer.
The part of wedrifid’s comment that I quoted defined the scope of my remark, which you misunderstood.
Any meaningful discussion of taxation focuses on the net, not on arbitrary subdivisions and labels. If art were taxed at 50% sales tax but also came with a tax deduction of 100%, I would feel real physical pain to see someone argue ‘oh, but we are discouraging and taxing heavily artwork! Just look at that 50%!’
Which is why I bring up the subsidies. If art is being hugely subsidized, then just being taxed like everything else (in your impoverished sense) still leads to art being cheaper than it should.
That may or may not be a fair point to make, but in that case your comment should have begun with “Yes, but...” instead of “No...”.
On the merits, I disagree on every point: that there is too much art, that current art subsidies are “heavy”, and that art subsidies necessarily cancel out sales taxes for the purpose of interpreting government policy (which may simply be incoherent and non-uniform).