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> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. In Ireland

> In an era where working a full time job is not enough to pay the cost of living, arts and culture no longer exist except as hobbies for rich kids. In Ireland _today_, we are in an era where working as a nurse, paramedic, firefighter, teacher, etc have become unable to pay the cost of living, leaving them to exist only as hobbies for the rich kids who can be subsidised by their parents or immigrant labour willing to be exploited to avoid deportation. Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation?

jimnotgym 8mo ago
> Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation? Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?
- closewith 8mo ago
  No, it’s not that we can only afford one. It’s that we’re choosing to ring fence funding for one while allowing the others to erode in real terms. Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises. The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.
kiba 8mo ago
The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price. You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works. The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort. By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.
- limagnolia 8mo ago
  If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.
  - WesolyKubeczek 8mo ago
    I know of cities where real estate development is rampant, sometimes to the detriment of quality, and yet apartment prices are soaring.
    - parineum 8mo ago
      That's because, in the places where housing is expensive, it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. It's a pipe dream that you can out build demand in these places. Reducing prices of housing in nice places to live (by any means, including building) will only result in more demand up until that insatiable demand is satisfied. Nice places to live can't support all the people that want to live there. Because demand is, for all intents and purposes, insatiable, the dollar value of housing/property isn't based on supply and demand because supply can't practically be increased to affect demand. Instead, the price is related to what a prospective buyer can afford to pay _every month_ and, thus, is related to interest rates. Interest rates go down, prices go up to the point where a prospective buyer's mortgage payment would be the same. People who bring up the (un)affordability of housing are never talking about Oklahoma, they're talking about the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City, Seattle, Portland, etc. All places that are so desirable, they can't practically support everyone that wants to live there.
      - 9rx 8mo ago
        > it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. I can't figure out how to make the math make sense even if I were to build a house in the middle of nowhere. Time and materials is the real killer. Some day, when AI eliminates software development as a career, maybe you will be able to hire those people to build you houses for next to nothing, but right now I don't think it matters where or how many you build. The only way the average Joe is going to be able to afford one — at least until population decline fixes the problem naturally — is for someone else to take a huge loss on construction. And, well, who is going to line up to do that?
dahart 8mo ago
> does only the arts deserve this Baby steps. Everyone deserves it, but getting there in one step is politically impossible almost everywhere in the world. Nobody’s saying only the arts deserve subsidies. It’s just easier to justify. But if we want everyone to have basic income, we need to applaud whenever it happens, even if it’s a small subset, and argue they deserve it and that we should have more of it. Complaining about the unfairness of artists being subsidized demonstrates and adds to the political difficultly. If we accept that it’s unfair for a subset, then we might never get basic income since the rich don’t need it and many don’t want it.
- closewith 8mo ago
  > It’s just easier to justify. It definitely isn't. In fact this is so polarising that I wonder if it's an attempt to poison the concept of basic income for decades to come.
  - jimnotgym 8mo ago
    Is it so polarising in Ireland, or just hn?
    - closewith 8mo ago
      Good question. The public consultation was 97% in favour, although half the respondents were receiving the pilot payment at the time. Following the announcement of Budget 2026 last October, I think this expenditure came into sharp focus, as the budget was considered to be almost hostile to workers and families, and anecdotally I think it has become more controversial since. That said, it is not unpopular, just polarising.
      - deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
      - dahart 8mo ago
        Overwhelming consensus is polarising? How so? It sounds like the exact opposite of polarising.
bugglebeetle 8mo ago
Ireland’s affordability problems are almost exclusively centered around its housing crisis and they need to just commit themselves to over-supply induced wealth destruction for the landlord class and older generations. Thankfully, there demographics also support such a move.

jimnotgym 8mo ago

> Is health not wealth? Education? Safety? Or does only the arts deserve this subsidisation? Isn't that a false dichotomy? We can only afford health or the arts?

closewith 8mo ago
No, it’s not that we can only afford one. It’s that we’re choosing to ring fence funding for one while allowing the others to erode in real terms. Ireland already greatly subsidises health, just not to a level that keeps pace with the cost of living. That’s why nurses and doctors are emigrating, and why recruitment and retention are constant crises. The arts scheme isn’t the problem in isolation, but when the State recognises that market income alone isn’t sufficient for artists to live, but doesn’t apply the same logic to other socially critical professions, it's definitely a questionable policy.

kiba 8mo ago

The problem with a UBI is not the UBI itself, but the fact that landlords could just raise their price. You need to solve the contradiction within the economy in order to make UBI works. The current way our taxation policy work is to tax labor and capital, which is the basis of our economy, while flinching away from taxing land, which derives much of its value from the surrounding economic activity rather than an owner's effort. By the way, the UBI is an old idea. In the 19th century, it was known as the Citizen's Dividend.

limagnolia 8mo ago
If cities allowed more supply to be constructed, landlords couldn't just raise the price.
- WesolyKubeczek 8mo ago
  I know of cities where real estate development is rampant, sometimes to the detriment of quality, and yet apartment prices are soaring.
  - parineum 8mo ago
    That's because, in the places where housing is expensive, it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. It's a pipe dream that you can out build demand in these places. Reducing prices of housing in nice places to live (by any means, including building) will only result in more demand up until that insatiable demand is satisfied. Nice places to live can't support all the people that want to live there. Because demand is, for all intents and purposes, insatiable, the dollar value of housing/property isn't based on supply and demand because supply can't practically be increased to affect demand. Instead, the price is related to what a prospective buyer can afford to pay _every month_ and, thus, is related to interest rates. Interest rates go down, prices go up to the point where a prospective buyer's mortgage payment would be the same. People who bring up the (un)affordability of housing are never talking about Oklahoma, they're talking about the Bay Area, Southern California, New York City, Seattle, Portland, etc. All places that are so desirable, they can't practically support everyone that wants to live there.
    - 9rx 8mo ago
      > it's expensive because a _LOT_ of people want to live there. I can't figure out how to make the math make sense even if I were to build a house in the middle of nowhere. Time and materials is the real killer. Some day, when AI eliminates software development as a career, maybe you will be able to hire those people to build you houses for next to nothing, but right now I don't think it matters where or how many you build. The only way the average Joe is going to be able to afford one — at least until population decline fixes the problem naturally — is for someone else to take a huge loss on construction. And, well, who is going to line up to do that?

dahart 8mo ago

> does only the arts deserve this Baby steps. Everyone deserves it, but getting there in one step is politically impossible almost everywhere in the world. Nobody’s saying only the arts deserve subsidies. It’s just easier to justify. But if we want everyone to have basic income, we need to applaud whenever it happens, even if it’s a small subset, and argue they deserve it and that we should have more of it. Complaining about the unfairness of artists being subsidized demonstrates and adds to the political difficultly. If we accept that it’s unfair for a subset, then we might never get basic income since the rich don’t need it and many don’t want it.

closewith 8mo ago
> It’s just easier to justify. It definitely isn't. In fact this is so polarising that I wonder if it's an attempt to poison the concept of basic income for decades to come.
- jimnotgym 8mo ago
  Is it so polarising in Ireland, or just hn?
  - closewith 8mo ago
    Good question. The public consultation was 97% in favour, although half the respondents were receiving the pilot payment at the time. Following the announcement of Budget 2026 last October, I think this expenditure came into sharp focus, as the budget was considered to be almost hostile to workers and families, and anecdotally I think it has become more controversial since. That said, it is not unpopular, just polarising.
    - deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
    - dahart 8mo ago
      Overwhelming consensus is polarising? How so? It sounds like the exact opposite of polarising.

bugglebeetle 8mo ago

Ireland’s affordability problems are almost exclusively centered around its housing crisis and they need to just commit themselves to over-supply induced wealth destruction for the landlord class and older generations. Thankfully, there demographics also support such a move.