Almost everything you can name today is less burdensome to buy today than in, say, the 1970s, with the major exception of higher education and, arguably, medical care. The demand for higher education has risen a lot relative to supply. First, the Baumol hypothesis (named for the late economist William Baumol): Higher education is an inherently costly labor-intensive-type activity where productivity advance is nearly impossible, leading to big price increases over time. Public university presidents, however, emphasize a third theory: public financial support for higher education in some sense is declining. In an ideal world, we would get rid of dysfunctional federal student aid programs.

Source: Forbes March 14, 2019 13:01 UTC