You can regulate things like higher education. IF you limited the size of loans, or made them government loans you could cap the price. You could also control i

You can regulate things like higher education. IF you limited the size of loans, or made them government loans you could cap the price. You could also control interest rates with regulation. Using Australia as an example, I went to a good University and had a government loan for the courses. I am 2 months away from paying it off (humble brag for me). But it was a government loan with no interest. So this is a good example of government offering a service to a point, that the private sector wouldn't ever touch. If the US government offered a 0% loan for education up to 50K and required payment only after reaching a certain income threshold, that policy would put top down pressure on expensive courses. They'd still exists but the bulk of everyone would be doing a course they could pay off and the competition would change the market. Likewise, I've recently been thinking about labor productivity with women returning to the workplace. Having kids is bad for families budgets (child care is a killer). Caring for kids keeps women out of the workforce. I think if public schools offered pre K care from about 18 months to kinder then you'd have parents being able to get back to work and you'd permanently reduce childcare costs. I suspect it'd pay itself off a few times over. Similar to building quality infrastructure. The problem with that second idea is that it would cost a ton upfront and the payback would be over the medium to longer term, like infrastructure. People are bad at long term choices and there's the trend of populism in politics at the moment. Which doesn't help anything.