People who work in the arts and humanities should learn less than people working in the sciences and economics because the benefits of arts and humanities to the population than that of scientific or economic endeavours.

The question of whether people working in the arts and humanities should be given equal remunerations has been debated all over the world. Professionals from each of the disciplines have opinions and the general opinion of the people has been reflected in the salaries of people in the arts in most countries. The workforce in the arts has been paid much lower than that of the science and people in the arts have been explicitly expressing their discontentment to this issue for the last two decades. Ever since the advent of computers and internet, the widely accepted notion is that the contribution by arts and humanities to human life is lesser than that of the science and economic industry and hence, people in each of these disciplines should be paid proportionally to their offerings. This is the general notion because the contribution by the arts and humanities most often, does not reflect directly on the country’s economic progress. However, it is unfair to say that these disciplines don’t contribute as much the sciences based on only how they benefit humanity’s ‘monetary’ progress. Both Arts and Humanities offer equal, if not more, benefits to the human race compared to the science and economics and hence, there is no reason to pay the professionals in the former any lesser than those in the Sciences.

Arts and Humanities offer a rich heritage of information regarding the world we live in, our cultures, traditions etc. All our knowledge about our ancestors’ culture and lives has been accessible to us through art, literature and paintings etc. they left behind. For instance, our knowledge about the Buddhist religion and cultures is so rich due to the cave paintings that the disciples of Buddha left behind for us. The paintings in the Ajanta- Elora caves in India have not just helped us understand the religion and life of a Buddhist man then, but also given us a treasure of natural, organic remedies to treat diseases that have actually come of great use for the medical practitioners of the modern world. To say that, all the time and effort that these monks put in creating the paintings didn’t reflect into benefits for the society is an uninformed opinion. These paintings not only contributed greatly to our cultural heritage but also helped the progress of science which is evidently of great priority to the human race. The fields of both economics and sciences have reaped the benefits of advances in arts and culture both directly and indirectly.

Moreover, the value of arts and humanities, that has been taken for granted in the modern consumeristic world until recently, has gained popularity again. Successful businessman and innovators such as Steve Jobs spoke about the valuable contributions people from the arts have made to his company with their creative approach to solve problems. Until this day, every team at Apple consists not just of engineers and people with a business acumen but also, artists and designers whose contribution into the company’s success has been apparent with Apple’s products, that are not just technologically advanced but also aesthetically pleasing. When Apple entered the market, the mobile phone market was dominated by a successful company Nokia, which was claimed to be unbeatable by economic predictions all over the world. Now one may wonder, what was one of the things that Apple did differently from Nokia? Well, Jobs in an interview answered this dilemma and said, ‘Apple valued its creative thinkers as much as the scientific thinkers’
Apart from the reasons discussed above, Arts and Humanities give us a medium to express ourselves. In the fast paced world that we lead our corporate lives in, humans are living like machines. Art has now, more than ever, become a saviour to keep the human mind invigorated by giving it the freedom to express its individuality and inner emotions. This has been very apparent in the recent lockdown the world faced due to Covid19 - when most of us resorted to arts and literature to keep ourselves occupied and sane, whether it was painting, cooking or reading a book etc.

Although, scientific and economic progress is of great value to us and without advances in these fields the world wouldn’t be the same. The myriad inventions that the world has seen since the wheel to the sports car have contributed immensely to the society. But to weigh these contributions against the tangible and intangible benefits of Arts and humanities and say that, the latter have not contributed equally is unfair and could be a great step back for the humankind. To continue the advancement of our race, we must see the value in the arts and respect the work done by professionals in arts. Hence, the people in the arts and humanities should be not be paid lesser than those in science and economics.