A thought experiment: suppose you are in a middle-class household, around the median income. What goods and services do you purchase and enjoy that are the very finest available, such that people in the top 1% of earners would consume the same item? A billionaire with a taste for Coca-Cola will drink the same coke that you do, though he/she will likely have a fancier car, house, means of air travel, etc. Tyler Cowen gives his list here, and it includes iPhones and Kindles, books and movies, writing paper and rutabagas. Let’s restrict ourselves to arts and entertainment, and assume what an ordinary household would reasonably buy without breaking the bank. Note I am not talking about the poor here, but rather households in the $55,000 annual income range.
Tyler’s list is a good start – small electronic devices for (among other things) music and text. The rich and I read much the same books, watch the same movies, television, and Netflix serials, and listen to the same radio. Through a cheap Spotify account, we have access to the same vast (though finite) selection of music. Variation in price/quality in home computers is not that large – i.e. you don’t need Gatsby-like wealth to own the top-of-the-line MacBook, though it is a questionable expenditure given good, lower-price substitutes. There is variation in home audio-visual quality – we don’t all have home theatres – but even there the increase in quality at affordable price has been substantial over the past decades.
So far, so good! But what if we want to go out and about? I don’t want to focus on geographic barriers: obviously if you live in Churchill, Manitoba, going to hear a world-class symphony is going to cost a lot in terms of travel expense. So to keep things concrete let’s imagine someone living in suburban Chicago. What cultural goods can they enjoy, at reasonable expense, that would also be chosen by Chicago’s 15 (as of 2013) billionaires, who might also have a taste for the fine arts?
You, another adult, and all your under-eighteen children can have unlimited access to the Art Institute of Chicago for a year for $95, which I would certainly include in the affordable range for a middle-income household (that amount would get two adults and two children into just two big-screen movies). There are not better Chicago art museums for the very rich – you will stand beside them as you view one of the world’s greatest collections of art. The argument can be made (though I would not make it) that museums ought to be free, fair enough, but we cannot say this fee is beyond the budget of a median-income household. Of course, a major difference is that billionaires can own very different art than the middle class can.
When it comes to live performances, rich and poor can see a show at the Goodman for $30. We will probably sit in different sections to hear the Chicago Symphony: though the balcony is well within median income budget, we won’t be seated next to each other. Locally, I don’t think the cultural experiences of the richest and the middle class are hugely different (compared to differences in residence, restaurants, clothes, and, likely, health care). The very rich can travel more for cultural experiences, the middle class is more (though not entirely) home bound.
Income inequality is important, and manifests itself in many ways – I would say the influence of the very rich on politics is most problematic. But I don’t see access to the arts as being grossly different.
I think your observations are interesting and true, though there are some exceptions that can be objectively observed. I went to the Stuttgart Opera just after Christmas. I had a seat in the sixth row, which was quite wonderful. It becomes a visceral experience to see and hear so closely. The seats cost about $80, which is about a quarter to a third of what I would pay in the States for a similar quality house. And yet many seats around me were empty, while the second balcony, which is much cheaper, was stuffed to the last chair. After intermission, many people from cheaper seats come down and sat all around me, so that almost no seats were empty. It was obvious that people really like the better seats, but that they couldn’t or wouldn’t pay the money needed to have them. (I don’t dress up to go to the opera, and I wear slightly weird clothes, so a lot of them, I learned, were using me as a landmark to spot the empty seats.)
I think it safe to assume that the better experience of a better seat creates fans who will return to the opera many times. So what does it mean that in the States I would have had to pay about $350 for a seat like I had in Stuttgart for $80? What does it mean that there are far fewer performances, so good seats aren’t left empty for the taking after intermission? What does it mean that Germany has 83 full time opera houses owned and operated by the state in a country the size of Montana, while in the USA most Americans would need to travel hundreds of miles to see an opera by a real company in a real opera house? Anyway, its a way of expanding on the thought experiment.
The billionaire class probably can arrange a private visit to the Art Institute of Chicago (or any other museum). No need to stand in front of a masterpiece and wait your turn to see it.