I’ve always felt the UK has an outsize contribution to music, especially in modern electronic/dance music, compared to the US.

Arguably at least 3/5 of the greatest rock and roll hands of all time were British (Pick any of: Beatles, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Cream, Queen, Pink Floyd, Tne Clash…)

A very large percentage of the musicians in those bands were graduates of the “Art Schools” of the time, which were like STEM schools, just, well, art.

Yes absolutely. In my mind, the US has had a robust rock and pop history, but name an artist pre 2000 and a good chance they are from the UK. The US slays now with hip hop and r&b, but the UK has their own unique scenes like grime, which aren’t big in the states.

Except Queen, where three of the members have real degrees.

<ducks>

The arts schools were more like high school/trade school hybrids.

I don't know how we'd quantify that in any objective way.

Subjectively, it has 1/5 the population of the US and its influence is rather large.

But really, what's the counterargument here? We're not sure if it's good for artists to have healthcare? I'm not sure the quality of the "arts scene" is the right question to ask.

The more important question is how many people are unable to survive as artists in the US, and how much work is compromised just to make ends meet. This is also something that afflicts journalism to a very high degree in the US. Hence why certain topics are untouchable for US corporate media.

> The more important question is

Says you. We're talking about public money being spent. I certainly don't agree that maximizing the number of people who can survive as artists is a good public policy goal. And I interpret "compromised" here to be producing something people want. That's vital, it's not a downside.

Fortunately providing healthcare to the public has public policy benefits besides maximizing the number of people who can survive as artists. It causes the population to have higher life expectancy, for one thing.

This is much easier to measure than who has the best artists.

Why are you posting that in reply to a thread about how healthcare encourages artists?

Because you brought up public funding.

This National Health Service is not a government program designed to promote the arts, so the issue of whether it "helps artists" is orthogonal to whether it is a good use of public funds.

That's just one of many, many examples, which I chose because the thread was already about artists. I also mentioned journalism, which you completely ignored.

How would you even measure that? Art is inherently subjective, and the “arts scene” even more so.