I wonder if it's reasonable to talk about some of these things separately from the rest of the economy. San Francisco can't build a bus lane, but it can build the hell out of some software. (You might argue that our productivity has gone down there too, but I'd say the social impact has never been higher.)

Maybe with "hard" infrastructure being a bit old-fashioned, or bogged down in red tape, maybe the entrepreneurial or organising or effective talent moved into other industries?

It sounds a little self-congratulatory, so I don't like the idea, but it's hard (for me) to see something like SpaceX as something other than a competent "can do" entrant into a stale old industry.

I don't know what lessons we might learn from that, though. Room for small upstart players in industries (especially around government spending) might be one.

huh? there’s plenty of colleges to choose from and yet costs go up every year.

to me it seems like a distortion caused by a Federal Gov that guarantees payment to universities in the form of federally backed student loans.

supply/demand

you are right, the demand is artificially propped up by the govt. as you stated.

However, it is tied to the job market, which is more realistic, and we are starting to see the fallout where many of the colleges will be going out of business.

Education is now a Veblen good.

I agree that it is presently such.

I disagree that it's ever been otherwise.

Subsidized corn is not rapidly and consistently increasing in price.

I don’t necessarily buy the idea that student loans are driving price increases, but there’s a tangible difference between subsidizing producers versus consumers (corn subsidies are generally the former, student loans are the latter).

If people couldn't get the loans the price wouldn't be that high, people don't have the money to pay it.

education is a highly inelastic good...couple that with essentially unlimited federally back loans and you get price increases year after year

Corn is an example of subsidized supply.

Government money increases the supply of corn, and drives the price down. Hence, corn, and products derived from it -- high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), corn-fed beef, Nu Metal bands, etc -- are cheaper.

College is an example of subsidized demand.

Government money increases the number of prospective students, by lowering the financial barrier to attend university. The result being that the cost of a university education has risen, drastically, while the quality of that education has plummeted.

education is not a commodity in the same sense as corn

and it’s much more of an inelastic good than corn

the difference between 50k in tuition and expenses and 55k will not change demand a meaningful amount, and universities exploit the fact that education is inelastic and the money is coming from a guaranteed source regardless of the student’s ability to pay upfront.

The reason for the subsidies is to support farmers by offsetting what would otherwise be price decreases, so...

Cars and Cellphone service sectors are heavily regulated. Textbooks are not regulated.

There is more to it than just "more regulations". Also regulation doesn't necessarily have to come from the government, for example, the Apple App Store is heavily regulated, and yet they have some of the lowest software prices compared to other platforms.

In my opinion, competition through trade may have a stronger effect on prices; you can easily buy a TV or a car made in China, but you can't easily attend the University of Shanghai, or be treated in a Hospital in Hong Kong.

Textbooks aren't regulated in the governmental sense (though they are somewhat at the middle/high school level), but there's certainly been more "regulation" in the sense of schools trying to enforce what books are used for what class for their own enrichment.

UK schools don't seem to have textbook standardisation in the way the US does, but the schools seem to function fine.

Are you saying that in any given UK primary school (I mean the actual physical school, not the school district, municipality, county, etc) they don't use the same textbook/curriculum across multiple classrooms in the same grade/standard?

Does each teacher or student/family chooses the textbook to use, without any standardization even at the same school?

That seems pretty impractical.

I don't think UK primary schools use textbooks. There is a curriculum for state schools which is reasonably proscriptive (and set by the state directly), but in terms of planning, creating, and delivering lessons, each teacher seems to do it themselves. Sometimes if there is more than one class of the same year group (grade) the teachers will work together on resources, but not necessarily. (This has always struck me as inefficient; in reality, teachers share a great deal of lesson plans and resources, but there is no compulsion other than the curriculum.)

My understanding was that US school districts or even whole states selected textbooks for K-12 students that all teachers were expected to use in public schools, but I may have missed something.

And US university accreditation seems to be tied to exam boards who also publish textbooks which students are expected to buy; again, in the UK, there is nothing so organised (in the sense of "organized crime") and University accreditation is done by a separate non-profit, the QAA.

I don't agree that textbooks aren't affected by regulations. Regulations permit easily available student loans which leads to the glut of college students who need to buy books. The books aren't exactly a free market as you are told by the school which books and which version to buy. Also, government programs subsidize textbooks.

That is a correct definition of regulation - it captures a feedback cycle; but the parent, was clearly meaning government regulation. If customers don't like a product that helps regulate quality, etc...