Why we should subsidize arts majors

The Economist argues that we should continue to subsidize college arts majors, responding to critics who quake at the thought of more and more young Americans directing their attention to Yeats instead of cancer cures. The Economist's response?

What is economic growth for, anyway? It's for expanding our choices and making life better. Is it really so surprising that, as we grow wealthier as a society, more and more of our young people, when the amazing resources of the modern university are put at their disposal, choose to use them learning something satisfying and enriching and not for anything except cherishing the rest of their lives? Is it really so surprising that taxpayers are not in revolt over the existence of poetry professors?