Steven Pearlstein: Why cheaper computers lead to higher tuition
Look beneath the surface of our polarized political debate over
budgets, taxes and the size of government and what you’ll find
is that it is largely driven by the seemingly inexorable rise in
the cost of providing health care and education and other
necessary services. For conservatives, these rising costs are
the inevitable result of too little competition, too much
subsidy and regulation and too much power in the hands of public
employee unions. For liberals, the problem is not so much the
higher costs as the inability of ordinary Americans to pay for
them, because so much of the national income is now captured by
the rich. There is some truth to both arguments. But what if the
more important explanation for our current predicament is that
“goods” such as medical care and education, public safety or
social work suffer from the fact that they are so labor
intensive. It’s hard, if not impossible, for them to be produced
more efficiently. It was i