Government investment in the arts, such as music and theatre, is a waste of money. Governments must invest this money in public services instead. (Band 9)

IELTS Writing Sample: Government investment in the arts, such as music and theatre, is a waste of money. Governments must invest this money in public services instead. To what extent do you agree with this statement? (Band 9)

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Governments cannot function well if there are many people in bad economic conditions. Neither can society. When society is segmented into rich and poor, the arts usually only serve the former. So, I think that the first priority is changing these conditions, which if nothing else will help to preclude a civil uprising of some sort. It isn’t as if this scenario hasn’t occurred repeatedly throughout history. At some point, both the arts and public services become largely irrelevant if there is no food available.

Nevertheless, there is often conflict between states that obscures the internal relationships of the populace.

But that is not always the case.

In some countries, there is sufficient money for both funding for the arts and rehabilitation of public works. The government can give to the arts because it has been taking care of public services for many decades and the infrastructure has not deteriorated. In these nations, there is usually very little poverty and relatively small wealth disparity between rich and poor. Governments can function appropriately.

For that reason, I think there should be a guaranteed income for those who need economic assistance. Then, the question could be phrased differently: Would citizens who have an income, but no job, be willing to volunteer to help with public services and/or artistic creation? In that sense, it seems that it might be possible to accomplish both purposes without basing it on taxation.

In truth, some of the public works that governments invest in turn out to be a much larger waste of money than could conceivably be spent on the arts. As such, the prompt itself seems to demonstrate a basic conceptual fallacy. [278 words]