Since you got plenty of cheeky responses, I'll attempt a more serious one:
You are clearly employable - while not as amazing as it used to be, there is a clear market for software developers. Your job is not at risk of disappearing.
Musicians, though, have it tough - "we" as a society [1] accept that we want to have art but its economic value has been plummeting for a while. And while no one shed a tear when (for instance) stables had to close due to the scarcity of city horses, we do want to try and keep local artists around. And it's not like it's a waste either - if the program costed "€72 million to date but generated nearly €80 million in total benefits for the Irish economy", that's not even a bad deal.
There's of course an argument of "I bet software developers could generate more benefits than artists", which is probably true, but I'd argue artists need it more right now. And nothing stops the program from expanding eventually.
> if the program costed "€72 million to date but generated nearly €80 million in total benefits for the Irish economy", that's not even a bad deal.
the accounting for the value generation is dubious at best.
Not to mention that my personal belief is that art should be patronage based, not taxation based. If the art has sufficient impact, it should be able to gather patrons to fund it. Otherwise, it's not artistic enough and naturally the artist would have to quit.
> Musicians, though, have it tough - "we" as a society [1] accept that we want to have art
But we do already have lots of art. Centuries of it in fact. Maybe the focus should be on making that art available to all, including for the purpose of using it to create new art, instead of pissing away money on select "art" that few people will see.
You are clearly employable - while not as amazing as it used to be, there is a clear market for software developers. Your job is not at risk of disappearing.
Musicians, though, have it tough - "we" as a society [1] accept that we want to have art but its economic value has been plummeting for a while. And while no one shed a tear when (for instance) stables had to close due to the scarcity of city horses, we do want to try and keep local artists around. And it's not like it's a waste either - if the program costed "€72 million to date but generated nearly €80 million in total benefits for the Irish economy", that's not even a bad deal.
There's of course an argument of "I bet software developers could generate more benefits than artists", which is probably true, but I'd argue artists need it more right now. And nothing stops the program from expanding eventually.
[1] Well, "they" - I'm not Irish.