In America, people pay for their own museums – and not through their taxes
'The People' did this for themselves - but then they are American, not Maltese
Kenneth Zammit Tabona has sent me a round-robin email with the message: “We can learn a lot from this.” Attached to the email was a YouTube video of Michelle Obama opening a new wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
I sighed in exasperation. This was yet another failure to understand the fundamental differences between the American way and the Maltese way. In the US, you would never get a bunch of ‘opinion leaders’ whining that they speak on behalf of the people in their demands that the government provide them with a museum/concert hall/theatre.
They would just go out and do it themselves. That’s how the whole of North America was built, and the attitude hasn’t changed to this day. The US is the quintessential liberal economy. If you want something, you have to go out and get it for yourself. If you can’t get it for yourself, you fall through the net.
The museums there are not provided by ‘the government’. They are the work of private benefactors, of committees of organisers and fund-raisers, of volunteers, of millionaires and billionaires who donate the money for acquisitions and their own private collections. Those people pay phenomenal amounts of tax and yet their attitude is not to say: “Iss hej, I already pay tax. The government can do it.”
So this was my reply to Kenneth:
Kenneth, you do realise that, apart from a basic annual grant from the New York State Council for the Arts, the Metropolitan is a completely self-funding corporation?
The United States is a liberal economy – even its museums are largely private initiatives and self-funding. This much should be obvious: if the US doesn’t fund higher education or even health care (people have to pay for them, which is why so few Americans go to college and why many Americans don’t get treated when ill) it’s not likely to fund museums.
All of the Metropolitan’s acquisitions are paid for by private benefactors and through fund-raising initiatives – NOT through taxes.
This tends to be the case throughout North America. It was certainly the case in Toronto, where the impressive collections in the two main art museums were donated by benefactors, and even the main wing of one of those museums was paid for by a Chinese immigrant who made good.
So if you really want to follow the American example, you have to address your demands not to the government – whatever government that may be – but to ‘the people’ on whose behalf you often claim to speak. However, you won’t get anywhere because ‘the people’ think liberalism is about divorce and gay rights and fail to understand that it is about the market and economic policy, and they are accustomed to thinking of the state coffers as a feeding-trough from which they get everything for ‘free’ – even a museum and the paintings inside it.
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It’s also completely unrealistic to compare Valletta to New York or Rome or London. We’re a tiny island, for heaven’s sake, not a world city. It seems that the more people travel, the less geography they pick up.
I wouldn’t say that the more people travel, the less geography they pick up – people just keep bolstering their own attitudes rather than challenging them, unfortunately.
I’ve met Maltese abroad who just stand in front of some renowned monument and then turn round and say “Imma Malta hafna isbah, u?” expecting me to agree with them. I don’t think that Malta must be ugly/bad/rotten just because some other place is magnificent and vice versa. This concept baffles them, however.
I hate this mentality in Malta of …I pay my taxes, so I am an authority of whatever the subject of the day might be. I pay taxes but it doesn’t mean I’m an architect and should comment as if I am one. I think you’re making a great point, Daphne. For all the people who are complaining about lack of museums or have varying ideas about the opera house: you want it? You pay for it!
I am certain this will curb their enthusiasm.
The curse of socialism: people think they are owed everything when they are owed sweet FA. That being said: health care, housing, education are a total disaster in the US and if the US market were not so liberal this global recession would have never happened. Moderation is the key and let’s face it, people here prefer to steal charcoal bins than go to a museum.
Unrealistic? Really? I agree with Daphne about the way US museums work. In fact, Daphne, I sent it round to give ideas. Remember the Metropolitan is not the MOMA. Why you brought Piano and the whole shebang into it I cannot imagine for what you said is absolutely spot on and what ‘we have to learn’ is that culture is obtained at a price and yes, once the inheritance and tax issues are put into place that favour ‘donations’ and ‘loans’ to the nation then yes, we have the nucleus of a national collection to add to the extant one in storage – or reserve, as they call it. There is another collection gathering dust in the vaults of HSBC, carried over from Mid Med days, which I curated when I worked there, and which HSBC have removed from its offices and branches.
Daphne, I agree with your opinion on this issue. Americans do not usually look to the government to improve their cultural sites. Usually the private sector takes the initiative, finds the funds and works together with the local government. However, I would like to add that although virtually all the museums in the US take an entrance fee, entrance to the museums in Washington DC is free. They are funded by the federal government. The space museum is one of them.
Another thing – in the UK (and I presume USA) grateful patients often make some sort of donation to the hospital in which they received treatment. Others join groups or NGOs which collect money and also donate equipment. Well, some representative of the Breast Cancer Society in Malta was on TV recently (I think on Favorite Channel) and mentioned that they had recently collected money through fund-raising activities and had purchased some equipment. They were now planning on some other donation.
The presenter just asked her “But isn’t it the duty of the government to provide these things?”
Just don’t call it a liberal economy when you’re in the US. I’ve made that mistake once and I don’t intend to make it again. The US meaning of ‘liberal’ is near opposite of what we mean in Europe.
[Daphne – Yes, they define liberal as left-wing.]
Daphne, I disagree with you on one point. Despite the fact that college is very expensive in the US ($25 K – $40K per year plus housing), the number of students who proceed to college is quite high. In fact today, you need at least a BA or a PhD to apply for a job. Most students obtain scholarships or student loans to go to college. While in Malta our kids are treated like a bunch of ‘mammoni’, at the age of 18 these students move to other states and survive completely on their own. These experiences are extremely beneficial later on in life, especially in the competitive workplace.
I remember that Evarist Bartolo once (when he was a government minister) claimed that in Malta we have “studenti tat-tajjar’. Maybe it was the only reasonable thing that he ever uttered as a politician, but he is right on this one.
I agree that most Maltese students are ‘mammoni’ but it would not be fair to say that they’re inferior to their American counterparts. I’ve seen many Maltese students achieve success abroad and foreign academic institutions and companies have praised their high level of education.
Malta’s ‘D’ grade university students are the America’s ‘A’ grade college students. I’ve seen some of these college’s course prospectus and some of them are laughable. I’d prefer a strong theoretical, conceptual academic education like what is offered by the University of Malta. It gives you the ability to have a more analytical and conceptual worldview. Of course such education is not for everyone. That is the reason why vocational courses (like the ones offered by MCAST) exist where practical and hands-on education is given. To come to the point, most of these Amercian colleges where vocational institutions which started offering ‘degrees’ and then became a college.
In addition, it would not be fair for bright students who are financially disadvantaged and cannot pay 25K dollars. And mind you, not all American colleges are good. Most of them are have quite easy exams and projects which make a degree (even science, ICT and engineering degrees) easily attaintable. This is to maintain a steady supply of income for the college, of course. So in essence it would be likely that in America you’d be paying 25K dollars for a crap degree.
Was just watching Super Quark on Rai Uno and guess what? There was a feature about the rebuilding of the new Academy of Sciences museum in San Francisco by a certain nonentity who goes by the name of Piano. He used old jeans to insulate the buildings, coconut material for his garden beds, and open hatches to circulate the air with the wind, and heating/cooling systems with sea water for the whole building. He even speaks Italian! http://www.calacademy.org/academy/
This man is a genius, and his buildings have low running costs.
There is one thing that is fundamentally wrong in Malta. You try to do one thing on your own and you have every Tom, Dick and Harry and possibly a couple of Astrids on your back. Apart from this if these people will let you get away with it you have the bureaucracy of the MEPA to contend with. Truly there is always some Robert Musumeci to get you out of the quagmire. But that is Malta for you. It is certainly not New York not even Lost Springs, Wyoming, by a long shot.
Theatres and museums are two different beasts altogether. On one hand a museum is created if there happen to be enough known artifacts worthy of being exhibited and people are willing to donate or loan their treasures. The museum’s exhibitions are mainly static and after the initial placement of various pieces, most of the expense, other than preservation and security, stops there. If a special exhibition is booked, it invariably attracts a lot more people than normal, thus covering the additional outlay. The theatre is not static. Its product comes and goes and the expense of each production has to be covered by ticket sales.
One cannot select a venue somewhere in America or other much larger country and compare it to some grandiose dream of a theatre in Malta. Had Mr. Piano included some replica of the old opera house, there would still be a few left of a certain age who would be interested if not for a particular production, but to compare and reminisce. There would no doubt be others who are genuinely interested in opera and other classical production but how many? And for how long would they support the theatre financially? Let’s not create another tax revenue depleter.
“The US is the quintessential liberal economy.”
Well if that’s a fact (and I take it you mean ‘liberal’ in the European sense of the word), then these two must be from outer space: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3kei8K5_dY
Most of you here wouldn’t have a clue of what they’re talking about. Yet everything they say is supported by evidence – which I’ve seen over many years, mostly hidden in the press pages. It is the reality you don’t know about because of the reasons Bob Bowman speaks about, particularly the six interrelated corporations that own the media. (Note that the interviewee, Bob Bowman, was a Democratic congressional nominee.)
But I’ll leave you to your hot debate. What happens in the US does not affect us. Their private Federal Reserve bank only controls the world’s reserve currency supply, that’s all. They create money out of thin air, loan it to the governments and collect interest. It’s called fractional reserve banking, otherwise known as ponzy scheme. All banks do it to various degrees, while central banks have encouraged it by creating more credit at lower rates and allowing more fractional reserve banking. For every one dollar a bank deposits at a central bank it can lend 10 times or much more. When every loan becomes a credit in itself, there is a ponzy mulitplier effect. It is why we have perpetual inflation across the world. They perpetually flood the market with new money. It’s a money printing machine for which everyone pays through inflation. Just in case anyone around is interested in a classic that will change your outlook on money, here it is: Murray Rothbard’s “What has government done with our money” – http://www.mises.org/books/whathasgovernmentdone.pdf
But again, I digress, please do carry on and excuse my tin-foil hat. Just wanted to show you what the looney world is talking about. Your world is of course the real one.
That’s terrible, Kev. Let’s go back to using seashells as currency.
How ridiculous you are, Antoine. Why don’t you read Rothbard”s book – you would learn something substantial for once.
Here, Antoine, measure your knowledge against what others in the know had to say on banking, money and freedom. All of this affects YOU directly, past, present and future: http://my.telegraph.co.uk/mattsta
(Wherever there’s a name without a description, it is either a former US president or a well-known American figure.)
Kev, I don’t follow British papers so am not familiar with their political leanings. Would The Telegraph happen to have right-wing, eurosceptic, possibly anti-American tendencies? There’s this saying about pulpits and sermons, you know.
“Most of you here wouldn’t have a clue of what they’re talking about.”
You’d be more persuasive if you weren’t so patronising.
Milone – Most of you here wouldn’t have a clue of what they’re talking about. That is a fact and you have just proved it.
That is not a fact, and you have proved yet again that you are patronising.
But aren’t donations to charities, museums and non-profit organisations tax deductible in the USA?
[Daphne – Donations to recognised charities are tax deductible, though the amount is capped. The list is generally appended to your income tax return form.]
I’m not sure how it works, but there are tax cuts for those who donate. Any accountants in the house that can explain it properly?
For if it is so, then the museums are paid for by tax money anyway, they just go straight to the museums, instead of going to the government first.
“The list is generally appended to your income tax return form.”
Did you know that much of the income tax paid in the US goes to the Federal Reserve? Did you that the Federal Reserve is a private entity controlled by international bankers? Did you know that the US Treasury is headed by an ex-NY fed chairman and former Goldman Sachs executive (Geithner)? Did you know that when the US Treasury needs money it gets it in the form of a loan from the Federal Reserve, which creates the money out of thin air and expects not only the money back but the interest that goes with it?
Do you know what is going on in the US right now? Have you heard of the latest ‘federal reserve’ bill which will give absolute control of every US business enterprise to the Federal Reserve? Did you know that when the Fed’s chairman Ben Bernanke was asked in Congressional committee where the trillions (14 trillion dollars as reported by Bloomberg) of bailout money went he replied that they are not obliged to say because they were above the government? (…when in fact, according to the US constitution, Congress is to have sole supervision of the country’s money supply. To boot, the bailout money went to the same Wall Street banks that created the crisis in the first place, but which are “too big to fall”. The taxpayer will have to pay for it).
Do you know that there is another bill (HR1207), by Ron Paul, that is slowly collecting backers in Congress, this time to AUDIT the Fed (which would unravel the ponzy scheme)?
The audit bill is a first step to regain the country. The Federal Reserve is literally above the law, not to mention its parents, the IMF and the World Bank. These are the same people making a bid for a world currency, now that they know the dollar will have to lose its world-reserve-currency status. They create as much money as they want. They loan as much money as they want. And when interests are too high to pay, they enslave the debtors. California is soon to default and will be taken over by the Federal Reserve. The IMF has been doing this for decades now. Then we hear that the debt was forgiven to third world countries – in exchange for exclusive mining rights for, say, diamonds…
Do you know anything about the military/police state that is taking shape in the US? Have you read the new cyber bullying bill?
These are just a few facts. Are there any facts we should know about the euro? Do we have any investigative journalists in Europe, or are they all of the Salvu Balzam type?
Correction: Did you know that much of the income tax paid in the US consists of interest owed to the Federal Reserve?