Firstly, measuring art in $ terms ignores the benefits that extend way beyond $ terms. Most fine art produced has a value approaching 0. My wife and I buy art from time to time, but we've never spent more than about $100 or so, yet get disproportionate pleasure from it.

As a first order approximation the "price" of art (as distinct from its value) is a function of branding not asthetics.

Secondly most artists get paid, not from doing fine art, but from adjacent careers that require good color, balance, composition, and so on. Industrial designers (think Jonny Ive), interior design, food presentation, magazine layout, web design, architecture and so on. Art skills are all around us. In the same way engineering is around us.

Put another way, engineers build ugly (think beige PC boxes). It took an artist to give us the iMac. And it was a marketing genius (yet another important skillset) to bring the artist and engineer together.

Teaching math goes far beyond creating mathematicians. Teaching art goes far beyond teaching artists. Societies that drop art because it is unproductive get ugliness permeating everywhere.