Investments are still costs Professor, investments are still costs

Professor Mazzucato tells us that:

Arts and culture are investments, not costs.

Just as jobs are a cost, not a benefit, so too are investments costs. The benefit of either, the job or the investment, is what results from bearing that cost.

We decide, for example, to pay for more blue haired noserings to reinterpret Hamlet for us. That is a cost, we’ve got to pay the blue haired noserings, hire a stage, provide rehearsal space and so on. Costs. The benefit, the income, from that investment is that we gain reinterpretations of Hamlet.

Note that this is entirely independent of whether we think that yet more Hamlet (by blue haired etc) is worth what must be spent to gain it. It’s just a truth that the spending - the investment - on getting more Hamlet is a cost. The benefit is whatever we gain by bearing that cost.

This is, of course, a more general complaint as well. We’re surrounded by those insisting “Cor, look at that investment!” who simply do not grasp that they’re, in reality, insisting to us how expensive the thing is. What benefit is what we get for it - not how much we spend upon it.

Tim Worstall