It’s called the foot-in-the-door method. First, you propose something that is slightly outside of allowable norms: denying gay people wedding cakes on grounds of “religious freedom”. Then, you slowly ramp up how extreme your demands are, coercing the other side to giving a tiny bit of ground each time, until you’ve shifted the entire fucking playing field. Conservatives are also very fond of the door-to-face method, which is demanding something completely outlandish that you know will be refused, and then asking for something less ridiculous by way of compromise, again resulting in a gradual shift in norms until views that were once considered moderate or reasonable become unthinkably liberal by destroying people’s sense of standards. The combination of these methods is called the “foot-in-the-face” method, which sums up where this whole thing is headed quite nicely.
this week in I Am Very Smart: having enough money to go to the opera, museums and concerts correlates with having enough money for food, shelter and basic health needs
They controlled for socioeconomic factors though! The people who conducted this study knew that people with lots of money to attend the opera were also more likely to be able to afford basic necessities, so they controlled for it in their analysis. The fun thing about statistics is that you can control for different confounding factors so you can look at the effects of one independent variable (opera or whatever) on the dependent variable (mortality). Part of being critical of potential biases is actually reading the article and knowing what to look for.
In addition to that very good point about controlling for socioeconomic factors, the article says a single museum or concert per year makes a difference. Most cities have free community concerts (some even have free opera performances!) and museums that are either free, pay-what-you-want, or at least have specific days/times during which they are free or at a significantly reduced cost. Many libraries (which are free) provide free museum passes to card holders. In fact, the article quotes a museum worker who works at a free art museum in Baltimore.
If you actually read the article you would also read that educators are excited about this study because it provides evidence that the arts should be made more accessible financially - by restoring arts programs in the public schools, for example.
3. Higher educated folks tend to have a better understanding of their self worth, reducing how much the rich can exploit them.
4. Higher education also fosters innovation and entrepreneurship, leading to more small companies, more competition, and an even smaller exploitable work force.
5. The class gate to higher education will be opened. And their kids will finally be truly judged based on their academic merit rather than the fact they could afford to attend in the first place.
