There is no one explanation for why prices rise in a market, but one big reason that college and homes are so spectacularly costly as I’ve pointed out before is because loans are widely available.
Cathy O’Neil says the same thing.
Ok, some basic economics. In an ideal market, prices are determined by supply and demand. Duh. But they are also determined by supply of money. And here’s the thing: all money and all monetary instruments are fungible.
Loans, insurance, IOUs, bonds, treasury bills, promissory notes, etc. – all of those (with various risk discounting built in) are as good as money. They are the same as money, which is what “fungible” means. Not all are perfectly fungible, but loans and currency are.
So this means that a loan, a grant and cash money chasing the same product – say a house or a degree – serves to drive the price up quite a lot vs. a non-loan, non-grant environment. (My back of the envelope calculation tells me that homes would be ~60% cheaper if no loans were allowed ever.)
More money chasing the same thing is called “inflation,” of course. Loans cause college costs to rise. Loans cause house prices to rise.
The more loans, the higher the price. Very simple (though many cannot see it).
Eventually, economics tells us that loan amounts for college should equal expected income vs. some risk discounting rate – meaning that college prices can rise far, far more than they have.
And they will, too, sans outside interference.
Without some regulations and constraint and given risk discounting, I’d expect college loans by 2050 to consume approximately 15-20 percent of the new graduate’s total lifetime income.
Unless that is we do something to prevent it.
OK, let’s do something to prevent it. Some of the suggested somethings that I’m aware of includeFinancing the schools more out of state aid and less out of tuition dollarsMaking the university a less generous employer, especially benefits-wiseFewer people getting college educated, with a frank understanding that what’s left of higher ed is to be a means to the end of employability, as opposed to (yes, opposed to) learning for its own sakeMOOCsAn alternative that I, for some reason, find, particularly distasteful, called “Praxis.” That’s Praxis as in Praxeology, in case you didn’t know. It’s no secret that the organization has an ideological agendaOthers?As for housing, yeah, I know Dr. O’Neil is for getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction. I am too, but for different reasons. Some have said that the phenomenon of “lights-out gentrification” in the hipper of the high-rise cities is almost entirely caused by quantitative easing, which seems plausible as that phenomenon is alive and well in any number of non-US cities, and QE has infested practically all nation states.
(sheesh, no ol element support, do feel free to delete first comment)
OK, let’s do something to prevent it. Some of the suggested somethings that I’m aware of include
* Financing the schools more out of state aid and less out of tuition dollars
* Making the university a less generous employer, especially benefits-wise
* Fewer people getting college educated, with a frank understanding that what’s left of higher ed is to be a means to the end of employability, as opposed to (yes, opposed to) learning for its own sake
* MOOCs
* An alternative that I, for some reason, find, particularly distasteful, called “Praxis.” That’s Praxis as in Praxeology, in case you didn’t know. It’s no secret that the organization has an ideological agenda
* Others?
As for housing, yeah, I know Dr. O’Neil is for getting rid of the mortgage interest deduction. I am too, but for different reasons. Some have said that the phenomenon of “lights-out gentrification” in the hipper of the high-rise cities is almost entirely caused by quantitative easing, which seems plausible as that phenomenon is alive and well in any number of non-US cities, and QE has infested practically all nation states.