Of course we do need art. But most artists are not protected by copyright, quite the contrary! They get extorted by producers and other mafia-like organizations taking their rights away and "eating" all their income as administrative fees.

According to official SACEM statistics, 66% of their registered artists (who pay membership dues) don't receive a single cent over an entire year. The Cour des Comptes (highest french authority for public spending) has published detailed analysis about the copyright mafia and how their 6-digit salaries really don't help artists make a living.

How to make a living is an issue in all of society, not just for artists. We should address this problem globally by making sure wealth is redistributed according to everyone's needs.

No. Don't mean to be ugly but when it comes down to it, it's not needed. It makes life more pleasant but isn't necessary for survival.

Which means it's somewhat out of balance for an IP protection scheme to exist that allows an entity to perform/create a work of art once and then sit back and collect on it for the next 150+ years.

Work once, get paid once. Musician? Venue commissions you, you get paid. Visual artist? Someone commissions you, you get paid.

Anything else is a benefit to one person or company at the expense of everyone else. A limited such benefit, per the original idea of copyright, is fine if society wants to encourage the arts. At what point is society oversaturated with "creatives" though?

That's why we don't have any great art from before the 1700s when copyright law was first introduced. Well, maybe one or two artists, like Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo and Rembrant, but the quality of their output was vastly inferior to all the many amazing works being produced nowadays. /s

Artists get paid for building a brand around their creations, not for making loads of pieces of the same thing. If someone were to copy one of his paintings, it would clearly not be of the same lineage.