It sounds like you have some misconceptions about Baumol's Cost Disease. I'm absolutely not intimately familiar with it, but the principle is clearly: 1) Effec

It sounds like you have some misconceptions about Baumol's Cost Disease. I'm absolutely not intimately familiar with it, but the principle is clearly: 1) Effectiveness increases in one industry. 2) Wages increase accordingly in that industry. 3) To remain competitive, other industries increase wages. The article clearly states that this means artists also receive higher wages. I do not have a specific quarrel with your conclusion that an artist must be very successful to make lots of money, but your arguments so far have not shown any reasonable negative causal relationship between wage increases across industries and the lifestyle/wealth level of the average artist. It's entirely plausible that the situation artists face in being successful or failing is due to other factors, some of which are technological and some of which are cultural. It's also plausible that this situation is merely imagined. There are likely many failed artists across the world, and there are certainly many successes, but the number of musicians who play medium/small gigs, the number of artists who sell commissioned works on a small scale, the number of architects and sculptors and 3D artists who do work for regular wages -- and so on -- is probably not miniscule. The number of writers employed by the television, film, commercial, music, and theatre industry must be enormous. There are regular dayjobs for artists too, you just have to look for them.