Sunday, October 09, 2011
The creative class is a lie
Salon.com: Someday, there will be a snappy acronym for the period we’re living though, but right now — three years after the crash of 2008 — American life is a blurry, scratched-out page that’s hard to read. Some Americans have recovered, or at least stabilized, from the Great Recession. Corporate profits are at record levels, and it’s not just oil companies who are flush. For many computer programmers, corporate executives who oversee social media, and some others who fit the definition of the “creative class” — a term that dates back to the mid-’90s but was given currency early last decade by urbanist/historian Richard Florida — things are good. The creativity of video games is subsidized by government research grants; high tech is booming. This creative class was supposed to be the new engine of the United States economy, post-industrial age, and as the educated, laptop-wielding cohort grew, the U.S. was going to grow with it.
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4 comments:
This creative class that exists in the US and abroad are feeling the pinch because we are in a time of limbo. The economy is bad enough that all jobs that are considered a luxury are being cut. The creative types are not needed for any of the required services and basic human needs to be fulfilled. We have not gotten to the point of desperation where in the Great Depression people's lives were only worth living if art could distract them. This creative class was created with the excesses of modern life and we will only be able to fund their rise again when the excesses again bubble to the surface. We are a luxury that due to corporations profit margins and financial doctoring society can not afford.
I'd agree with the title of the article, "The creative class is a lie." I think a statement like that can be negated because they tried to predict the rise of a class which maybe didn't exist. The creative class was a limited cultural and economic phenomenon, a product of the Clinton years when America actually had some money to spend. The journalists and authors who defined the creative class were looking at a very small part of a much larger picture. In a way the demise of the creative class that are outlining has always been happening. Capitalist pits producers against producers fighting for the consumers' purchases. The victor not only gets the dollar but they get stronger and will be established to better fight against other producers. So it makes sense that a couple of coffee shops, websites, and other artisans will rise to the top leaving others behind. Something that is even more obvious is a record being cheaper at Walmart than at Hipster Records. This affects all kinds of people in the theater mostly actors and writers. Those types of workers are trying to establish a lifestyle based on their particular artistic skillset. In a sesne they are no different than the record store or small start-up tech business mentioned in the article. The current economic climate does not help those types of people: money is tight because so many other things like healthcare, food, and luxuries are so expensive. Of course those workers will have to change the type of work they do or change completely to find the lucrative job. Unfortunately the alternative is retail, which again looking at it under the umbrella of capitalism, can mean a low-paying job, a job with no security or room for growth, or both.
So really this should be no surprise when looking at the big picture of things. However, what's a shame is the idea of a creative class is a very attractive idea: people making a good living from their ideas, art, and desires, who doesn't want that?
I disagree with the slant of the article. Yes, it is probably much harder to make money creating art now than it was in the past, but that's not because of a lack of consumers for it, instead it's because there is so much more available for less money or even free. Consider books: bookstores are nice to go in and browse, but I can do the same thing in a library. If I decide I want to own a book I'm not going to the bookstore to get it, I'm going to Amazon or the like where it will be in stock, the price will be cheaper, and I don't have to drive around trying to find a copy. When I see Amazon going out of business without something with an even better business model taking over then I'll believe that there's no longer a sales market for books.
To add to what Tom said, this article primarily talked about local bookstores, indie record shops, and other such brick and mortar structures going out of business. However, their counterparts on the web are booming. While blockbuster flails and borders on drowning, Netflix is booming. While record stores are boarding up their shops, the iTunes store and Pandora are seeing record sales and usage respectively. People may be losing their jobs sitting behind a desk but how many jobs are created in web dev, site management, and everything else that is entailed with being an internet mogul? There may be a net loss of jobs but those number remain to be seen.
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