ArtsWatch

The New York Times has a piece Thursday attacking the idea of tax breaks for philanthropy, and in it, the following arguments are put forward:
- “I don’t think we’re getting the bang for the buck for gifts to build football stadiums and concert halls, with all due respect to Carnegie Hall and other institutions,” billionaire William H. Gross says. “I don’t think the public would vote for spending tax dollars on those things.”
- “When foundations, corporations and individuals give money to the opera,” said Xavier Becerra (pictured), a California Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee who represents a district in Los Angeles populated largely by young working-class immigrant families, “my folks are very unlikely to benefit from those forgone tax dollars that could have been used for health care, for after-school programs for kids, for help in getting access to college education.”
This is a vast and complex subject - the idea that individuals get a tax break for giving money to schools, orchestras, hospitals and other nonprofits - but it's surprising to see these claims go unchallenged in the Times' story, which severely limits its usefulness.
First, the public does vote on whether to fund concert halls and sports stadiums - all the time. Many communities routinely approve such funding in special referrendums. The resulting facilities in turn generate tax revenues many times their initial investment by stimulating development.
Second, Becerra's cheap slap at opera (he didn't even need to mention ladies in fur and men in white-tie-and-tails) not only plays into an easy caricature of who attends opera, but also who does not. Most operas and orchestras do substantial outreach and education, presenting opera in school auditoriums and putting kids in buses to hear real orchestras in real orchestra halls for the first time.
I don't know who Becerra thinks his "folks" are, but working class immigrant families are exactly the constituency that can and should benefit from opera.
In fact, if you think about it, working class immigrant families practically invented opera in America.