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School/education on its own seems relatively fine. It's just the particular way we go about it that ruins everything.
The standard meme in government economics is, "...best I can do is subsidize demand and restrict supply." We see this meme played out in at least three domains where there is high government involvement: education, medical care, and housing. Even just from that, there's not much surprise that prices rise higher and higher. But I think the standard bifecta is missing a third factor to make it a trifecta. What does the government do after subsidizing demand, restricting supply, and seeing prices go up? Why, they invariably come in and help the cartel they've set up price discriminate as perfectly as possible!
Every company wants to price discriminate. Companies/cartels with market power really want to price discriminate. The standard economics result is that if a monopolist is able to perfectly price discriminate (i.e., charge each individual customer exactly their willingness-to-pay), then they capture all of the gains from trade, leaving none of the surplus to the consumer. All consumers are still just barely willing to engage in the transactions, but none really feel like they've gotten a good "deal" out of the trade. These companies with market power are the bootleggers.
The baptists are in the government, seeing that high prices appear to harm poorer people, and they looooooove to help poorer people! So, what do you have to do when you want to go to college? Oh, just submit this federal form that tells the company gobs of data about your income/assets/etc..... oh, and for your family, too! That'll allow us nice people to
help make college affordableprice your personalized college experience as darn close to your individual willingness-to-pay as possible! Hospitals often tout (not sure if required by the government) programs that simply slash your bill, give you a personalized price, if only you give them a bunch of information about your finances. The government will even directly provide health insurance options for you... but, ya know, if you want agoodindividualized price, you better give us your financial data. I even saw this week that they're going to start adding fees to mortgages for homeowners with good credit (personalize their price) in order to subside those of homeowners with bad credit (personalize their price, too!).All of this is wonderful, if you're part of the cartel that determines who can be a doctor, who can build a hospital, who can start a university (or even a program within a university), who can build what where (and have ease-of-permitting). Those are the people who will capture all the gains from trade. Everyone else? Whelp, be glad that you can just barely buy it, nevermind that you won't have much left over for any other aspects of A Good Life you might want.
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