The state is giving $306,050 in taxpayer money to arts & culture enterprises under the "Maryland Arts Employment Stabilization Program." As the economy struggles and the state faces further budget gaps, is this a good way to spend resources? Discuss.

GOVERNOR O’MALLEY ANNOUNCES ARRA GRANTS AWARDED TO 29 MARYLAND ARTS ORGANIZATIONS

Maryland State Arts Council Grants $306,050 to Preserve 40 Jobs in Nonprofit Arts Sector

Maryland Arts Employment Stabilization Program Grantees ($306,050)

Organization Name Grant Amount County
Academy Art Museum
$10,000.00 Talbot
Art Institute and Gallery $8,500.00 Wicomico
Art on Purpose $10,000.00 Baltimore City
Ballet Theatre of Maryland, Inc. $10,000.00 Anne Arundel
Black Cherry Puppet Theater $15,000.00 Baltimore City
Candlelight Concert Society, Inc. $12,500.00 Howard
Caroline County Council of Arts, Inc. $10,000.00 Caroline
Cecil County Arts Council Inc. $7,500.00 Cecil
Chesapeake Arts Center $7,500.00 Anne Arundel
CityLit Project $12,500.00 Baltimore City
Collective, Inc., The $1,000.00 Baltimore City
Contemporary Arts, Inc. $6,800.00 Baltimore County
Delaplaine Visual Arts Education Center $10,000.00 Frederick
Dorchester Arts Center, Inc. $15,000.00 Dorchester
Footworks Percussive Dance Ensemble $15,000.00 Anne Arundel
Garrett Lakes Arts Festival $10,000.00 Garrett
Imagination Stage, Inc. $12,500.00 Montgomery
Jewish Museum of Maryland $17,500.00 Baltimore City
Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts $10,000.00 Anne Arundel
Maryland Historical Society $10,000.00 Baltimore City
Maryland Symphony Orchestra, The $12,500.00 Washington
National Philharmonic $12,500.00 Montgomery
Olney Theatre Center for the Arts $10,000.00 Montgomery
Pro Musica Rara $5,250.00 Baltimore City
Pyramid Atlantic Art Center $15,000.00 Montgomery
Queen Anne's County Arts Council $2,000.00 Queen Anne's
Round House Theatre $15,000.00 Montgomery
World Arts Focus $12,500.00 Prince George's
Young Audiences of Maryland, Inc. $10,000.00 Baltimore City

Can't find a link. The whole press release is below the fold.

Continue reading "Should O'Malley give taxpayer $$$ to puppet theaters? " »

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (44)
Categories: Government & Business
        

Greg Mankiw points out that President Obama wants to hugely increase government spending on research and development while Obama advisor Austan Goolsbee has published a paper arguing that government R&D spending doesn't accomplish as much as people think. From Goolsbee's abstract:

The majority of R&D spending is actually just salary payments for R&D workers. Their labor supply, however, is quite inelastic so when the government funds R&D, a significant fraction of the increased spending goes directly into higher wages. Using CPS data on wages of scientific personnel, this paper shows that government R&D spending raises wages significantly, particularly for scientists related to defense such as physicists and aeronautical engineers.

Fortunately, elsewhere on his blog Mankiw provides the solution to an inelastic R&D worker supply: more H-1B visas.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Government & Business
        

Johns Hopkins economics prof Steve Hanke, libertarian, hard-money advocate and sworn enemy if the International Monetary Fund, is dismayed that the IMF and every other form of big government is making a comeback, ratcheting up from the plateaux they reached during the previous crises. This is from his latest column for GlobeAsia magazine.

As Robert Higgs verified in his 1987 classic, Crisis and Leviathan, crises act as a ratchet, shifting the trend line of government’s size and scope up to a higher level. History provides many illustrations of how damaging this fallout can be.

Take the Great Depression. At that time, the organized farm lobbies, having sought subsidies for decades, took advantage of the crisis to pass a sweeping rescue package, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, whose title declared it to be “an act to relieve the existing national economic emergency.” Seventy-six years later, the farmers are still sucking money from the rest of society and agricultural policy has been enlarged to satisfy a variety of other interest groups, including conservationists, nutritionists and friends of the third world. Indeed, even though agricultural prices hit record highs last year, the river of government farm subsidies kept flowing.

Here is the whole thing:

The panic of 2008 has sent the political classes into fits of hyperactivity. Their favorite ploy has been to scare the public into supporting gigantic interventionist policies designed to inflate government budgets and re-regulate economic activity. These scare tactics were on display as world leaders prepared for the London meeting of the Group of 20 on April 2. The countries represented in this grouping account for two-thirds of the world’s population and 90% of its gross national product. After failing to predict a slow-down, let alone a panic, the International Monetary Fund finally issued a scary forecast on March 19—just in time for the G-20 meeting.

Continue reading "Hanke: Crisis is perfect excuse for big-government fans" »

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Government & Business