I love the idea of a sliding scale and use this on my artist website. No one uses it. Others who I mention this too stare at me as if i were from another planet. It works great at events if the option includes free. But here at a public museum the scale you use is way too tilted to discourage. When I was in college in the early 70’s all museums in the Bay Area were free. This allowed and encouraged anyone to drop in as they could or felt or needed. I see the scale puts 50k people at $8. $8 is too much for any visit to a museum. The contents of the museums are 90% past copyright protection and as public domain are the People’s “property”. I think the idea of a sliding scale merely allows the rich, the 1%, to once again skirt all scales of responsibility and invert this as punishment on the 99%.
Even if you are to use a sliding scale lets get the proportions right. The median income of the bottom 90% is $30k. That should be the zero point. The bottom 80% live paycheck to paycheck and the most they should pay is $2. As we go up from here with those with true disposable income, top 10% starts at $150K, lets go for the ten increments, top 10%–1%, like so: 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600.
But again, lets’ just make that which should be free, free, and make the 1% pay their proportional share, at this point of massive inequality, everything.
