Wages and Living Standards to Being an Artist

Artist have a struggle with wages because they can’t support themselves without a backup system. Artist are unable to just support themselves by just selling their arts. In the United States there are about 115,000 young people who graduate from college with art degrees every year says Juri Koll, an artist and film maker in Los Angeles. Most of these young people obtain jobs related nothing to their fine art fields, making not enough to pay off college loans, standard living, and to support their art careers.
Culture is a big part of our society and we show it through ourselves. Every day we see someone else’s creation, either we visually see it or read, we can’t help ourselves. To the apps we play on our phones, commercials we see between the NFL football games, clothes we wear, and even the cereal we eat were designed a certain way to fit society’s appeal. Expression of art is also a way to tell stories, like history. An artist who bases their art off of their family’s immigration could tell a story to a generation that could have never imagined a life like that before. For millennial artist and the choice to make it an economic jobs is tremendous work. “To support a career in the arts in 2013 requires a cocktail of connections, financial support, talent and tremendous luck.” says Elena Sheppard is a writer and editor who is currently in charge of arts and entertainment at PolicyMic.
I think we should care about this because everyone has their own way to express themselves. Artist need higher wages because they shouldn’t be working at a job that doesn’t relate to their degree, they’ve spent over ten thousand dollars on to get. You wouldn’t expect a person who got a degree in medicine to work at a restaurant as a server just to support themselves.

Cites

1. Sheppard, Elena. "For Millennials, Being an Artist Isn't Practical." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 8 Nov. 2013. Web.

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You do bring up a good point that students go to university to major in fine arts and that they end up not getting paid much or at all for whatever art they are a part of. However, if all fine arts were paid much more money then I believe that the value of the arts would then decrease. If people that are a part of the fine arts were paid more then more people would be more interested in joining the arts, which would decrease the quality of the arts that we have today.

The issue I have with most artists is they feel they are automatically entitled to their own value because of their degree. I see constant things which are described as "art" and attempted to be passed off under thousands of dollars. To make art, you must understand the unique and different so you can appeal to the public's desire. Simply making a bunch of paw prints on a blank canvas and saying "look what I made!" Is not worthy of society's attention anymore. The wall street journal points out only a 4.5% unemployment rate for those with a Bachelor's in fine arts, close 2012. The median salary for a fine art's graduate is $42,000 (again, as of 2012 and glassdoor.com, site used for professional salary searching.)

This number is comfortable enough in that artists actually make $3000 more than liberal art's majors or psychologists in their first years out of school. By definition, there is no evidence showing that they are failing so dramatically as claimed. There are some who choose to work outside of corporations and feel they can create a new Picasso or Banksy, but these people usually do not qualify under such standards.

I agree that artists do not get paid enough for what they do, but I think that they shouldn't get paid much more than they already do. The degree path in order to become an artist is not very difficult compared to other degree programs such as computer science. Since it is rather hard to "make it big" in the arts, the pay that artist receive shouldn't be extremely high, especially if their work isn't selling.