Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like your comment as a contribution to discussion, but I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. I see this implied quite a bit on Hacker News. Usually something along the lines of, "But doing this will increase income inequality" stated as a counterpoint. If overall quality of life increases, I am personally unconcerned with income inequality. I haven't seen definitiv…
>I'd like to see a dialectic about why income inequality increasing is bad, in of itself. One main issue is that income inequality decreases socioeconomic mobility by inflating the cost of scarce goods that improve earnings capabilities. So 4K TVs are cheaper but college tuition becomes unaffordable, because good universities and grad programs are valuable, scarce goods that the wealthy can outbid everyone else on. P…
Tuition rates didn't go through the roof until the government started guaranteeing/sponsoring tuition loans. When that happened, the colleges and banks knew they could charge whatever they wanted and still get paid, so tuition cost became detached from ability-to-pay, and there was no incentive to keep prices affordable anymore.
The victim in this is the student, who gets saddled with decades of debt, or alternately, an eviscerated credit profile with an albatross that can't be discharged even in bankruptcy. That, however, is obviously not something that disturbs the educational system.
Things go screwy fast when you decouple the classic economic checks and balances. While a small number of wealthy people would be both willing and able to afford outrageous rates for tuition, most of them would want a good value, and there's not enough fantastically-rich Americans to support something the size of the education system without drawing from the middle class for pupils.