Links:

It clearly is the case that just voting in elections, as a citizen, is not enough, we all have to raise our game.   We cannot wait for the perfect solution to be handed to us. We have to work for it.  

If there is no market:  Link

In 1964, Sears advertised a TV console for $750, writes Mark Perry on Carpe Diem. For an equivalent amount, about $5,500, a consumer today could buy “8 brand-new appliances (refrigerator, freezer, dishwasher, range, washer, dryer, microwave and blender) and buy 9 state-of-the-art electronic items (laptop, GPS, camera, home theater, plasma HDTV, iPod Touch, Blu-ray player, 300-CD changer and a TiVo recorder).” In short, things are a lot cheaper.

This illustrates The Desperate Need for Market Forces in Education, writes Matthew Ladner, guesting on Jay Greene’s blog.

We live, in short, in an age wonders, except of course for areas of the economy heavily managed and financed by the government,” Ladner writes. “In those areas, instead of radically improving products provided at continually lower costs, we tend to see expanded costs for no, little or ambiguous improvements.

From another Perry post, Ladner supplies a chart showing the fall in prices in food, cars, clothing and furniture from 1948 to 2010 as a share of household expenditures. Then he adds a Cato chart showing inflation-adjusted K-12 spending and achievement since 1970.