Which Children Should Have to Pay for Sunday Admission to Museums in Boston?
This is being debated now, with implicitly egalitarian ideas expressed by the Boston public
The Boston Globe article (from which the photo above and extracts below are taken) recounts a debate within Boston City government (the mayor and the city councilors) and—in the comments section—among Boston Globe readers about, in essence, this basic general question: Who should have to pay or not pay for admission to six major non-profit Boston museums (including a zoo)?
This general question is being debated with respect to a specific proposal by the Mayor to make museum admission on the first two Sundays of the month free to every Boston Public School (BPS) student and two other family members as a pilot program and then—if the data shows it is possible—to expand the program a year later to include all students in Boston including those in Catholic private schools or otherwise not in the public school system. As you can read in the Boston Globe article (unless it blocks you for not being a subscriber) the debate splinters into debates about two specific major (and other minor) questions:
a) Why not make it free ALSO for Boston students who attend parochial private schools, or Charter schools, or who are home-schooled?
b) Who should pay for the extra cost to the museums caused by the extra number of visitors?
Please take a look (just skim if you wish) at some of the comments by readers that I have copied below for your convenience. You will see that the comments are about what is FAIR and MORALLY right. This is what people care about. The commenters have an implicitly egalitarian viewpoint—that all children—no matter how wealthy their family may be or where they go to school—should be able to enjoy the museums. This viewpoint, in turn, is implicitly based on the more general egalitarian principle: “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need,” since egalitarians consider children to be contributing “according to reasonable ability” just because they are children and with no amount of work required from them.
All families that reside in Boston pay the same taxes whether your child goes to private school or public. Make it free for all children.
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It seems Wu and her cohorts within the Council only like some students! a strange stance .......
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Its all funded thru non profits, private donations and PPP money. So really how can they expand it if the money isn’t in the budget ? Where does the $ come from? I think it would be great if all kids are eligible but what are the options to fund the expansion.
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The money is coming from the property-owning taxpayers whose kids are being denied access to the program. Just like everything else. Too many people jumping into the apple cart expecting others to pull them along. Yesterday at BJ's in Medford, I was pretty much the only paying customer there. Everyone else was part of the free s##t express. As the government encourages more and more into the wagon for the rest of us to drag, eventually, we are going to want to jump in too. Except, who will be pulling the cart then?
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It's a pilot program -- start first with BPS children. I'm grateful all the museums ponied up to make this happen. See how well it works, see if it's utilized, see if it makes sense financially, then seek funding to expand it.
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They didn’t pony up anything. They are being PAID to suffer the children to come unto them. They should be doing this as part of their “in lieu of taxes” obligation. The pilot program wouldn’t have a budget of $1,000,000 if they were “ponying up” as you say.
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All it would take is one enterprising attorney and a few parents at a parochial or charter school to sue the City. The obviously unequal application of the program would not survive a legal challenge.
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Unlike some, I think the court system would understand that when you pilot a program, you roll it out for small (smaller) group, then use the information you gather to determine whether or not scaling it up is a good idea.
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It really does seem unfair. A BPS student can take three family members, while some students are not allowed the free museum? How about two tickets to BPS students, and the other two for students not originally included.
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Centrist Voter3/28/24 - 8:26AM
First Wu retaliated against white Italian owners of restaurants , then excluded white elected officials form a dinner. Now she is excluding people over their faith.
And please be warned - she aspires to take Sen. Markey's seat when he retires.
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This program is wonderful. Free admission is the only way to increase the diversity of museum audiences. Continue it and expand it.
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So only those who are “diverse” should not have to pay???
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Nacho, everyone should gain free admission.
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The reason that none of these commenters make an EXPLICITLY egalitarian argument, based explicitly on the egalitarian principle “From each according…” that I spell out above, is because this principle is censored by the mass (and ‘alternative’) media as I discuss here and because there is not yet an egalitarian revolutionary movement that expresses this principle explicitly and widely. Most people have never seen or heard this egalitarian principle expressed explicitly, or else if they have heard of it they have been taught—falsely, as I explain in item # 2 in my earlier post about Karl Marx—that the principle is a horrible Communist idea concocted by Karl Marx that leads to ugly dictatorship like in the Soviet Union or Communist China and so one should ever openly express the slightest approval of it.
But if admission is free, then who pays for it?
This is also a theme of great concern to many commenters:
bostonglobereader173/28/24 - 8:59AM
The museums of Boston receive less financial support from the city or state than any other museum system in the country. They rely entirely on private funding, commercial activity, and gate revenue. Sure, they don't pay property or retail taxes, but neither do the private universities in the area that charge students $80,000 a year. It would be great if museums were like public libraries--free to all. Are people willing to pay for those museums by paying more in taxes or diverting public spending to them from something else? Let's put it to a referendum! Most people have no idea how our museums are funded.
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The universities give millions of dollars of services in lieu of taxes. The museums can let some kids in the door.
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Let the Archdiocese pay for the Catholic school students. They can certainly swing it.
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This “Who pays for it?” question is, as one can see from the comments above, a very thorny and divisive one when it is addressed in the absence of explicitly egalitarian ideas.
The way to address the “Who pays for it?” question that truly reflects the egalitarian values held by most people, and is unifying and not divisive of most people, is this way, the way it works in an egalitarian society.
The people who are allowed to freely enjoy the museums “pay” for the museums by contributing to the economy reasonably according to ability, and those who do not contribute reasonably according to ability are not allowed to freely enjoy the museums.
This is a simple idea. It is not complicated.
So who, you might ask, then ‘pays’ the museum employees? The museum employees are ‘paid’ by being granted, in exchange for contributing reasonably according to ability, the right to take for free from the economy what they need or reasonably desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need.
And who determines what is “reasonable.” Answer: the local assembly of egalitarians as discussed here.
But how do the museums pay for all the stuff they need to operate? The museums, if they are given by the local assembly of egalitarians a green light to operate (on the grounds that they contribute something desirable) then have the right to take for free from the economy what they need in order to operate (and their workers get “paid” as described above.)
But what if the museums cannot handle all the people who want to, and who have a right to, enjoy them for free? In this case, as the egalitarian principle spells out for scarce things, simply “equitably ration” museum admissions “according to need” (in this case everybody’s need is the same). This could be done the way restaurants to it, with a reservations-required system. Or alternatively, with a first-come-first-serve up to some maximum limit system. It’s not rocket science!
But how can this actually work, and isn’t it really just a centralized economy that is dictatorial? No. Read about it in more detail here and here.
This idea is not complicated! But it is CENSORED because it means the abolition of class inequality and the end of a ruling billionaire plutocracy enjoying enormous wealth and power and privilege. This idea is practical, and it resulted in INCREASING economic productivity in revolutionary Spain 1936-9 (which the ruling class makes sure we don’t learn about). Read about this here.
If you are subscribed to the Boston Globe then it might be a good idea to perhaps add a comment with a link to this post (or if links are not permitted then maybe just a summery of this post/your suggeation)
Billions to Zio-nazis in Israel and Nazi-infested Ukraine and we are arguing about museum admittance fees??
Access to Cultural treasures ought to be publicly subsidized with free or nominal fees required, or just a request for pay-what-you-can.