A Joy For Ever (and Its Price in the Market)

"A Joy For Ever" (and Its Price in the Market) by John Ruskin is a series of thoughts on how art, money, and what society thinks is important are all connected. It comes from two speeches Ruskin gave in 1857, where he thought about how art and money work together, and what that means for society. Ruskin looks at the idea that real art should make people happy for a long time and thinks about how money and business affect art. At the beginning, Ruskin talks about how ideas about rich and poor have changed over time, and points out how they use to think poverty was good, but now rich is preferred. He introduces the idea that a country's work can pay for both what it needs to survive and also great art, saying that it's important to value both beauty and usefulness. Ruskin also says that it's important that leaders are ethical in how they use people's work, making people see that being rich comes with responsibility and that how we handle money and business can change how society values art.