Speaking as a Euro who works in the arts, I certainly prefer that art take priority over profitability if push comes to shove, but I'm also keenly aware that if there's no profit there won't be as much funding for the art. Subsidies are sort of a nice idea and I think there's a role for them in production financing, but they're a double-edged sword - they may help some deserving projects get made, but only at the whim of the subsidy-dispensers, which gets you back to a patronage system.
As well as working in film, I also enjoy opera, and I'm struck by how the San Francisco Opera does Tosca almost every damn season, presumably because someone on the board or high up on the donor list really loves it. Yeah, it's a great opera, but there are hundreds of operas and even a moderately large and well-financed company like the SF Opera only does about 12 productions in a year. They aim for a mix of reliable favorites and interesting new works/productions, but the near-permanent presence of Tosca on their calendar is a reminder of how badly patronage can skew things. By rights, it ought to be staged every 5-6 years; having it on stage almost every year means proportionally fewer productions of other great Verdi operas such as La Traviata.
For others, including prominent art critics (of the European persuassion at least), "culture and progress" can mostly be harmed by profits.