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You can also make almost the opposite point. We used to spend a lot on basic needs like food and shelter, 3/4 of the average income on food, and more money on b
by iguy 6y ago
You can also make almost the opposite point. We used to spend a lot on basic needs like food and shelter, 3/4 of the average income on food, and more money on bread alone than on housing (IIRC, 19thC rich countries). As growth/technology made these cheaper, or if you prefer, made us so rich that they can be had for a tiny fraction of our income, we spend it on other things.
Many of these are status competitions -- it's the location of your house that's expensive, not the drywall, and that's an auction against others who also want it. Education in these graphs is arguably like that too -- what's expensive is a top name, rare connections; the actual knowledge is very close to free.
Healthcare isn't a status competition. But it does increasingly seem like it's possible to spend an unlimited amount of money on it -- why not try a million-dollar cancer treatment if you can (somehow) afford it? None existed in Maslow's time partly because the science hadn't advanced, but also because there were too few potential customers. As a society, it isn't crazy to think that this should be a growing proportion of what we buy. If you think it should be a decreasing slice of the pie, then what exactly should be increasing, over the next 50 years? (Although obviously I'm aware of the ways in which how we buy it is deeply broken.)
- leereeves 6y agoAccording to [1], the average cost of education has risen significantly faster than the CPI, not only the cost of top name universities with rare connections. > [Since 2001], in-state tuition and fees at public National Universities have grown the most, increasing 212%. while > The total consumer price index inflation increased by around 50% from August 2000 to August 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-college/articles/2017-09-20/see-20-years-of-tuition-growth-at-national-universities https://www.usnews.com/education/best-colleges/paying-for-co...
- iguy 6y agoI guess I do think people paying for education are trying to buy something other than knowledge, even when it's not the ivy league. Perhaps more like trying to buy a position in society, an entry to a respectable white-collar career. That would be why (in this theory of mine) it hasn't been disrupted by technology. The ability to impart knowledge to lots of people, in a way which was once only possible by gathering them in a room with a teacher, has indeed become cheap. But, as you say, this has not placed pressure on college tuition, as would happen in a more normal industry, which was actually selling what it says it's selling.