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My BFF MS shares a familiar theory, today, over at The Economist:

KEVIN DRUM worries that the high cost of college tuition is driven by the very large value of lifetime earnings gains derived from a college degree. [...] As long as we keep giving people whatever student loans they need to attend college, and absent any regulatory price controls, colleges will hike tuition to the very limit of what it’s worth in higher wages.

Well, that’s a novel and insightful concept, no? I took a shot at the issue of spiraling tuition inflation last September; let’s look back at what I came up with:

Basically, as I see it, colleges are selling would-be graduates their own potential, future enhanced earnings (not to mention prestige, quality of life, etc.) at a discount; of late the amount of the discount seems to keep getting smaller and smaller. Which, realistically, should not come as a surprise, given the nature of humanity and the systems we create, as well as the many “market failures” which probably apply to a college education and minimize the potential for competition to push prices toward the seller’s cost rather than toward the buyer’s ability to pay.

Apologies for self-quoting but, ahem. And being four months ahead of the curve is really a very modest claim on my part; this situation has seemed obvious to me for years. I could probably prove it, too, if I fished around in e-mails or chat transcripts long enough…

…but, obviously, no one would care, for the same reason that Democracy in America is linking to Kevin Drum instead of me. I’m not brave, ambitious and/or well-connected enough (take your pick) to push and shove my way in front of an actual audience. No one reads this stuff.

But, in light of actual evidence in support of what my colossal vanity has believed all along, maybe they should.

Seems to amount to something like this:

A Republican brandishing a large stick, standing on top of a ladder next to a wasp’s nest, around which a slowly-increasing number of wasps buzz, somewhat defensively. And the Republican, newly-stung in one or two places, affects this look of startled disbelief and pain, and complains loudly:

“OW! Ow, ow, owie, owwwww!!! Why are these wasps stinging me?!? All I’m trying to do is help with my Ryan Plan™ for Wonderful Things Which Benefit Wasps Honest They Do! This is all Jimmy Democrat’s fault for telling everyone that my splendid and beneficent Plan is actually a stick which I just want to poke innocent wasps’ nests with!! Untrue, untrue! Ow, ow!! Unfair!! Owwww!!!”

Yeeeeeep, doesn’t it just break your heart.

Also… (more…)

I’m becoming so scatterbrained. Perhaps it’s no wonder that most people seem so clueless, if just a month of 40-hour workweek plus commute, on top of a very-marginally-full life otherwise, turns my brain into a leaky bag of pea gravel. Hopefully the process is reversible?

Meanwhile though, how about some good things.

ITEM: Mubarak is going away. Hey look, I guess that “hopey changey thing” is, in the right hands, at least as good at getting rid of Arab dictators as “liberation at gunpoint,” and far less costly in American lives, funds or prestige.

ITEM: Assuming that an object with a bunch of “artificial leaves” might basically amount to an “artificial tree,” the delusional daydreaming of someone you know just might be looking slightly less so. Honestly I’m starting to think that my “reasoning” about this idea really is less random and zany than I thought, and that we should double down on developing it asap. (Though I’m suspecting that it’s much more likely the concept will vanish into that black hole of good ideas instead, the victim of awkward little technical details and/or oil-company conspiracies, take your pick.)

ITEM: More-immediately cheering, perhaps, are suggestions that another already-practical idea is looking less zany: Obamacare-slash-Romneycare. At least one contributor to both says that the health insurance mandate is better than alternatives, so: anyone thinking that maybe Democrats were dopes for letting themselves in for Constitutionality challenges, when other mechanisms could have worked just as well? Hey look, just maybe our party wasn’t being self-destructively over-clever, after all. For once. Better still:

…in Massachusetts, where there is a real world example of an individual mandate, insurance premiums are actually going down. “According to insurance industry figures, nongroup premiums have fallen by 40 percent in Massachusetts while rising by 14 percent nationally…”

Holy shit. That sounds absolutely fucking awesome. Just maybe, if it gets the chance to do so and if we aren’t all bled dry in the interim, this thing will actually work after all?