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Showing posts with label contribution to economy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label contribution to economy. Show all posts

Saturday, June 24, 2023

Brian Easton: The GDP Fetish


We have it around the wrong way. The issue is not what the arts contribute to market output. It is what market output contributes to the arts – and a lot more besides.

According to its Minister, Carmel Sepuloni, the arts, culture and heritage sector ‘contributed $12.9 billion to our economy’s GDP’ in the year to March 2022. I await a similar release from the Minister for Corrections. A calculation for the justice sector using the same method would find that crime made a similar contribution. (Nobody seems to have done the calculation.) Is that something to celebrate?