I love art. But the last couple of things we've been to have been terrible.

The Paramount could make events there better by having more comfortable seating. I'm willing to pay $75 bucks to see something, but not if my ass feels like it's on fire after 2+ hours. And my ass is padded.

If actors do in fact take nothing but "really shitty acting jobs for peanuts", then inevitably they WILL starve, just like anyone who works a really shitty job for wages that would make "substandard" look like heaven.

And if they're forced out of acting in order to "find work in a different field", then they're not "actors" anymore - in the sense of having that be their vocation, as opposed to their avocation - get it?

As Mary Evelyn Tucker writes in "Philanthropy in the World's Traditions--A View of Philanthropy in Japan: Confucian Ethics and Education"

For Confucius, the practice of humaneness has the effect of ripples in a pond, extending first to one's family, and then to teachers, friends, and acquaintances, and finally, to all within the larger region and state where one lives. Humaneness is thus particularized; it must have priorities along with expansiveness.

No, we will never be like Europe, but neither do we have to relegate theatre practitioners solely to the young or wealthy youthful elite. (Nor should we. To do so would be wasteful and foolish.) Nor can we look to blinkered government for financial aid. We need only take care of our family through a greater sense of humaneness. American capitalists, unlike their Japanese brethren, could use a little jin, on, and giri.

And for #6: Are you kidding? The National Science Foundation is most certainly NOT providing "little federal interference." The NSF doesn't so much groom grant applications as take a rasp to them. Only the ones that polish up real nicely get funding.