&gt; If governments had the same failure rate as businesses we would be up in arms.<p>So governments should take less risks, and in particular incur <i>even less</i> debt.<p>&gt; That is not a sign of &#x27;extreme fiscal irresponsibility&#x27;.<p>I&#x27;m not talking about failure rates, I&#x27;m talking about utter failure to spend within means, or even recognize a boundary of means.<p>&gt; You make it sound like political viewpoints should not be a consideration.<p>Not at all; rather, I was suggesting that citing one economist to support a political viewpoint doesn&#x27;t make that viewpoint right, and in particular doesn&#x27;t provide any evidence whatsoever about whether that viewpoint is <i>ethically</i> right.<p>&gt; Since you appear to support special non-profit status for schools<p>I wasn&#x27;t taking a stance on that here; rather, I was suggesting that it doesn&#x27;t make sense to specifically call out private universities for consideration of revoking that status, without broader consideration of non-profits in general, simply to prop up public universities.  More specifically, I was complaining about the entitled stance taken in the article.