Are Colleges Becoming Market-Oriented?
Someone once remarked to me that the college campus is the natural home of socialism. But it looks like even colleges are starting to price services according to demand rather than follow a simple uniform rule. Major in some subjects? Expect to pay more. Starting this fall, juniors and seniors pursuing a major in the business school at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will pay […]
Education: Dollars and Cents; Apples and Oranges.
How much does your state on K-12 education compared with others? The U.S. Census Bureau has the goods. Here’s the home page for education-spending numbers, but you may need to head over to this page and then look for the text “Public Elementary-Secondary Education Finances” to pick from the annual reports. The reports, by the way, start in 1992 and go through 2005. Since there’s some […]
The Large Cost of Marginal Increases in the Home Ownership Rate
A key insight of economics is to focus on the marginal (or “next step”) costs and benefits of a given action. Say that you’re going to buy a new car. You may be willing to pay another $5,000 for a better vehicle, but at another $5,001–that extra dollar–you start to reconsider. The same logic works in public policy and in the economy generally. We stop […]
Isn’t Mass Murder Chic?
As music critic and political columnist Jay Nordlinger often points out, Che Guevara is uncomfortably fashionable. Nothing like honoring a “revolutionary” thug by plastering his visage over t-shirts, watches, and other stuff. Fairly disgusting, considering Guevara’s murderous life, no? I thought of Chic Che when I was perusing the trail map for a ski resort. I normally expect to see names of wildlife (ptarmigan), laborers in the […]
Want to buy a library card?
Municipal governments charge fees for golf courses, water parks, and other services. Why not for libraries? Think for a minute why governments charge fees for the recreational facilitites they run. Golf courses require regular (that is, daily) maintenance, and there’s usually someone around to check receipts to see if a duffer has paid the greens fee. Given the nature of the game, specifying the “gate” […]
Taxpayers to Pay Others to Golf
Taxes are serious business–don’t pay them, and you go to jail. Even so, voters in one Minnesota town have decided that the power of government should be applied for the great public purposes of … giving some people yet another place to play golf. As the wealth and geographic scope of a metropolitan area expands, owners of golf courses often trade lawn mowers, fertilizers, and […]
Blogging retirement
The PolicyGuy blog is going into retirement. Too many other responsibilities, including … blogging elsewhere.