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Comment by darawk | Hacker News Reader

I agree with a lot of this article, but the answer here is definitely not to enable more people to go into the arts on the public dime. If you want free college, let's have it be free for everything except the arts. If you want to get an MBA, or learn mechanical engineering, i'm happy to subsidize that. But I have no interest whatsoever in subsidizing your creative writing degree.

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Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value other people getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts?

I really enjoy going to the theater and seeing performances of all kind, just as I like tech/business advances. I want people to enhance the arts as well as the sciences.

I acknowledge the idea of focusing on marketability and "ROI" for someone choosing their own path... However, when providing "access" to education, why encourage someone who could write the next show I want to see to instead consider crunching hard maths that they don't care about?

> Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value other people getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts?

Because they increase GDP, and thereby pay back their education in the form of income taxes, and increase the available wealth for everyone.

Alternatively, GDP Or no, I value their artistic output over your ability to target ads on a CRUD app.

I guess you don't care about the millions of people living in poverty, then?

...buying theater tickets or books also increases the GDP?

Not nearly as much.

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