Income depends upon productivity

At Artful Manager, Andrew Taylor writes:

Just as arts organizations are getting good at the economic impact arguments -- that professional-grade culture revitalizes communities, spurs leisure spending on restaurants, hotels, and such, and bolsters the essential baby-sitter industry -- professional sports teams are getting a new quiver for their bow: successful sports teams make people work harder, take bigger risks, and shop, shop, shop.

The Boston Globe story is here, and the research paper by Davis and End, for which, of course, the Globe does not provide a link, but which I was able to find through Googling around a bit, is here.

Two points:

First, arts organizations are not getting good at economic impact arguments; the arguments are as bad as ever.

Second, the income of a household, a city, or a nation depends on the productivity of its workforce. Productivity, in turn, depends on the skills and knowledge of the workers, the capital and resources it has to work with, and an economic, political and legal system that encourages people to work in those jobs where their productivity is highest. That is all. A higher rate of consumption does not make a region rich.

The idea that if only people would spend more on restaurants, parking and babysitters we would all become richer is simply false. It might boost measured GDP by a small amount, since in that measure of income monetary transactions (hiring someone to cook your food, or look after your kids) are counted while home production (cooking your own meals, looking after your own kids) is not. But it does not a wealthy city make.

I don't know if a winning sports team really does increase labor productivity, by making people more energized, or making them get along better with their co-workers, or whatever. But if it did, that would at least be a reasonable argument that incomes would rise.

But making us "shop, shop, shop"? It might make restaurant and hotel owners happy (and of course they have a big stake in persuading people that what's good for Holiday Inn is good for America). But it doesn't make us rich.

Sorry to be a boring economist and all, but can't we start talking about the arts being good because, well, art is good?