First off:
I bought a paper copy of this book in a specialist book shop because I was
browsing through the Philosophy section and it jumped out at me. Yes, yet
another great thing about living in The Hague is that there are quality
bookshops which stock a wide range of new work in English.
The Killing
of the Creative Class is the subtitle to this fascinating book. I have only
read the first five chapters but the author has already made a big impression.
Scott Timberg is one of the many victims of the first years of this millennium: you
could say he was careless enough to be born at the wrong time. He explains how
he was brought up to believe that hard work plus talent equals a middle class
life style. In a few short years he found himself without a job and losing his
home and at risk of living without medical insurance.
Quite apart
from his professional disappointments,
he is angry at the way his bank foreclosed on his mortgage instead of working
out an alternative solution. Yet his anger is dignified and contained. There
are many around who, by good fortune,
were not so cruelly affected by the crash of 2008 but who share the despair of people
like Scott Timberg and who are waiting for individual citizens who were
responsible for bad decisions to be brought to justice: wrong things were done
and the wrong doers should be held to account. Sadly, governments around the
world, in the USA and in Europe, have failed, and failed miserably, they have
failed the citizens who elect them and they have failed to live up to the
standards that can rightfully be expected of the holders of high office.
Scott
Timberg sets out his plan in the Introduction: that new technology,
globalization and deregulation have changed the game in a few short years, with
tragic consequences for a whole swathe
of people, including the citizens he calls the Creative Class. He includes in
the creative class workers in recorded music and book stores, and I was struck
this week by news of the closing of a renowned shop selling printed music in
New York. After 80 years in business, the shop is closing down this month.
Free downloads of often inferior quality prints have killed this supplier of
high quality music scores.
One of the
many things I like about Mr Timberg´s book is that he does not get stuck in
distinguishing between art for art´s sake and commercial use of the arts: to
him, the arts and creative artists are all one, whether they be clerks in a
book store or musicians on the road.
Mr Timberg
writes about how remuneration for creative work has been driven down over a
decade. This strikes a chord. I know of musicians in Spain who in 1992 were
paid 40,000 pesetas for a performance and who, in 2010 were offered 100 euros
for the same type of gig. That sounds fine until you do the conversion: 40,000
pesetas is equivalent to 240 euros. So a
job that was paid 240 euros has been driven down to 100. This is one of many
examples that bear out Mr Timberg´s
thesis.
I look
forward to reading the rest of this interesting book over the weekend. Of
course, not all of the creative class are penniless and homeless. Mr Timberg
points out that the heavy hitters of the entertainment industry can still
pocket huge amounts of money, but he rightly points out that they are the exceptions. Recent reports of the
court case brought by the family of Marvin Gaye claiming their share of the
success of a recent hit tune by Pharrell Williams talk of receipts of 17
million dollars in sales of a single song. Clearly the majority of the workers in the creative class
will never come anywhere close to this kind of money.
To be
continued …
No comments:
Post a Comment