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I don't have to take out a 10 year loan to own high heels As a college educated individual, this may be the dumbest thing i have ever read

• joe_the_user 16y ago
  Yes, It's a transparent abuse of analogy. "Bubble" is short-hand for a self-reinforcing financial/psychological dynamic which drive irrational investment patterns. Not every trend is a bubble, not even every exponentially-expanding trend is a bubble. Cigarette smoking, for example, expanded exponentially to virtually every nation on earth once tobacco was moderately widespread level. Epidemics often follow exponential growth patterns too but are not "bubbles". Bubble are specific to the investment process because the investment process is where prevailing beliefs can drive short-term prices but long-term prices requires more "fundamental" qualities. Just as much, since a bubble dynamic requires not just high but expanding prices, bubbles are limited, at the minimum, that total amount of investment funds of a society. Now, it should be noted that the investors driving an "education bubble" are not the "education consumers" - these consumers don't even have any money! The real investors are the government and the educational institutions. Together, this group is shoveling money into the education system with the expectation of getting more back later, with interest. For-profit educational institutions add to this dynamic by allowing unlimited further money to enter into the equation. That government guarantees this racket and doesn't, itself, expect a profit, only heightens this "problematic dynamic" (like the home-loan scam only "pre-bailed out").