Why U.K.?
"Why are there no good authors from the U.S.?" My coworkers complained. "Because we don't have universal health care." I responded. Everyone looked at me with elevated eyebrows like I had a cardboard sign that read "The End is Near" written in my own feces.
I would like to explain my comment.
Authors and artists need lots of leisure time to practice their talents. An author generally needs to write 1,000,000 words of crap before they have the talent to write anything worthwhile. Good musicians spend dozens of hours a week practicing. Americans do not have that much time because they are burdened by debt.
If a young person goes to college, on average they will graduate with $19,000 of debt. They may be deterred from obtaining a degree in the arts because it will not guarantee them money. On graduating they will likely get a job that pays about $20,000 a year. Coupled with taxes and other expenses, they will not be able to pay off their loans, and will be burdened with compounding interest.
If they get lucky, health insurance will cost them $300 a month. $300 * 12 months = $3600/year, a huge chunk of their income. Most health insurances cost a lot more.
If they actually have health problems, they will find that their health insurance prefers healthy clients and they will discover the time it takes to battle insurance companies to obtain the services paid for. Phone calls will need to be made, letters written, research done, more phone calls made, to get coverage on expenses that would otherwise bankrupt them. Also take into account the time needed to recover from the illness.
The combined burden of college debt and healthcare costs force young people to work at menial tasks rather than spend time honing their talents. And this is why the U.S. which is five times more populous than the U.K. -300,000,000 people in the U.S. compared to 60,000,000 in the U.K. - produces far fewer and more inferior artists.
To depress you Americans, here's a list of fantastic authors and musicians that the U.S. did not produce. Sorry, they came from the U.K.:
Musicians:
David Bowie
Morrissey
The Clash
The Cure
The Beatles
Belle and Sebastian
Coldplay
The Darkness
Radiohead
The Who
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Pink Floyd
Queen
Elton John
U2
Sex Pistols
Oasis
Rod Stewart
The Police
Fatima Mansions
Bloc Party
Badly Drawn Boy
Amy Winehouse
Depeche Mode
3/5 of Fleetwood Mac
Gorillaz, Iggy Pop
Peter Gabriel
Yes
Genesis
Phil Collins
Pop Will Eat Itself
Razorlight
The Libertines
Robin Trower
Tricky
Authors:
Roald Dahl
Terry Pratchett
DH Lawrence (The White Peacock)
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
James Joyce (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake)
George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm)
Evelyn Waugh (satirical novels)
WH Auden (poet—died 1973)
Ian McEwan (has won many awards, including the Booker Prize)
Roddy Doyle (He's Irish; Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha)
Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity)
Ted Hughes (poet—married to Sylvia Plath)
Seamus Heaney (Irish poet—Nobel Prize for Lit in 1995)
J.K. Rowling
Makes me doubt that we fought on the right side of the Revolution.
I would like to explain my comment.
Authors and artists need lots of leisure time to practice their talents. An author generally needs to write 1,000,000 words of crap before they have the talent to write anything worthwhile. Good musicians spend dozens of hours a week practicing. Americans do not have that much time because they are burdened by debt.
If a young person goes to college, on average they will graduate with $19,000 of debt. They may be deterred from obtaining a degree in the arts because it will not guarantee them money. On graduating they will likely get a job that pays about $20,000 a year. Coupled with taxes and other expenses, they will not be able to pay off their loans, and will be burdened with compounding interest.
If they get lucky, health insurance will cost them $300 a month. $300 * 12 months = $3600/year, a huge chunk of their income. Most health insurances cost a lot more.
If they actually have health problems, they will find that their health insurance prefers healthy clients and they will discover the time it takes to battle insurance companies to obtain the services paid for. Phone calls will need to be made, letters written, research done, more phone calls made, to get coverage on expenses that would otherwise bankrupt them. Also take into account the time needed to recover from the illness.
The combined burden of college debt and healthcare costs force young people to work at menial tasks rather than spend time honing their talents. And this is why the U.S. which is five times more populous than the U.K. -300,000,000 people in the U.S. compared to 60,000,000 in the U.K. - produces far fewer and more inferior artists.
To depress you Americans, here's a list of fantastic authors and musicians that the U.S. did not produce. Sorry, they came from the U.K.:
Musicians:
David Bowie
Morrissey
The Clash
The Cure
The Beatles
Belle and Sebastian
Coldplay
The Darkness
Radiohead
The Who
The Rolling Stones
Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Pink Floyd
Queen
Elton John
U2
Sex Pistols
Oasis
Rod Stewart
The Police
Fatima Mansions
Bloc Party
Badly Drawn Boy
Amy Winehouse
Depeche Mode
3/5 of Fleetwood Mac
Gorillaz, Iggy Pop
Peter Gabriel
Yes
Genesis
Phil Collins
Pop Will Eat Itself
Razorlight
The Libertines
Robin Trower
Tricky
Authors:
Roald Dahl
Terry Pratchett
DH Lawrence (The White Peacock)
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
James Joyce (Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake)
George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm)
Evelyn Waugh (satirical novels)
WH Auden (poet—died 1973)
Ian McEwan (has won many awards, including the Booker Prize)
Roddy Doyle (He's Irish; Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha)
Nick Hornby (About a Boy, High Fidelity)
Ted Hughes (poet—married to Sylvia Plath)
Seamus Heaney (Irish poet—Nobel Prize for Lit in 1995)
J.K. Rowling
Makes me doubt that we fought on the right side of the Revolution.
Well said, Chris. Their treatment of the arts is far superior to ours. They have a national theatre, opera, ballet, orchestra/symphony, etc. They have all kinds of government subsidized programs to develop artistic or literary projects that dwarf our own. We do have our "National Endowment for the Arts," but you likely won't have any experience with their projects unless you live in the DC area. In the UK, the opportunities in government supported arts are limitless in all parts of the country. The government values the arts, so the people value the arts--and vice versa. It's just part of their identity, so no one has to apologize for deciding to become a writer or musician or actor.
ReplyDeleteThree-fifths of Fleetwood Mac. Ha!
ReplyDeleteWhile I think other factors may also be involved, I think you've definitely found an underlying factor. Who knows what other things my brilliant parents may have been able to spend their time on (not just writing/music), if they hadn't had to navigate the mess of a medical system we have now.
Makes me want to move to the UK and write books and books and books.
don't you think we could make an equally impressive list of american musicians and authors?
ReplyDelete...the D's advocate
It's a good argument. There is another side though. Fugazi is the hardest working band on the planet, and a damn good one too.
ReplyDeleteElliott Smith
Red Hot Chili Peppers
I guess those guys had leisure time. Dang, I want some leisure time.
It could also have something to do with the fact that the U.S. is only about 230-ish years old. But just for kicks, a list of VERY GOOD American authors (in no particular order):
ReplyDeleteWilla Cather
Cormac McCarthy
Toni Morrison
Jonathan Rosen
Maya Angelou
Marilynne Robinson
William Faulkner
Ernest Hemingway
Zora Neale Hurston
Alice Walker
Jonathan Safran Foer
Saul Bellow
Ralph Ellison
J.D. Salinger
Tim O'Brien
John Steinbeck
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Louise Erdrich
Walt Whitman
Herman Melville
Edgar Allen Poe
Ann Michaels
Paule Marshall
John Edgar Wideman
Robert Frost
Edith Wharton
Eudora Welty
Jack Kerouac
For more authors, see the following link: http://www.shsu.edu/~eng_wpf/amlitchron_index.html
Of course, there will be more British authors, due to the fact that they've been around longer. But there has been more American Literature written in the post-WWII moment than in all of the years before it combined. American's are writing. And they are writing well.
Though when push comes to shove, I agree with you about our health care problems.
In reply to Makayla's comment on the U.K.'s advantage of having existed longer. The authors I named are those who wrote after 1940, when universal healthcare was adopted.
ReplyDeleteThe U.S. list would be less impressive if we made that the cut-off date.