Private Mars Rocket II

There is a proposal floating around the US to forgive all student loans for college. Although attractive, this proposal is wrong-headed. And it's unfortunate for those that have taken on debt for college.

The real problem is not people being in debt to go to college. The real problem is the high cost of college, which is caused by two interrelated factors. First, states used to fund state universities by money appropriated from tax income. Now they mostly fund those universities via tuition. Second, student loans are easy to get and well-funding by the Federal government.

Thus, colleges have no incentive to keep the cost of education low. If they don't get it from the state, the students will pay. The taxpayers who don't have students in school have no incentive to insist on state money going to state universities. Private universities can use the sticker price of their programs as a prestige factor and a way to control admission. The only loser in this is the now-indebted student.

Forgiving student loans is a one-time benefit which will, at best, do nothing to fix the cost of higher education and at worst encourage price inflation. If we'll forgive debt once, maybe we'll do it again.

Every so often, people who are irritated at the dysfunction of Washington DC and/or their local statehouse propose term limits on elected officials. This is, in my view, a clear, simple and wrong solution.

The fact of the matter is that running government is a skill, just like repairing cars or computers. It takes time to figure out how to do it. Term limits mean that, as soon as Joe or Jane Legislator figures out how to do something, they're gone. So instead of having the needed experience, they have to rely on lobbyists and professional staffers to get stuff done.

There is a real solution to dysfunction, namely, vote out dysfunctional officials and vote in functional ones. That requires voters accepting compromise, deal-making and cooperation. There is no silver bullet.

H. L. Mencken said that For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. As we hit the final day of our biannual exercise of democracy, I thought I'd reflect on a situation when America picked the wrong answer: Prohibition.

America in the 19th century and into the 20th had a real problem with alcoholism. There were many more alcoholics back then, and more plain-old drunks as well. This was a problem for a lot of people, but especially women. Given the difficulties of divorce, the lack of a social safety net and the limited job opportunities for women, being married to an alcoholic could be disastrous. It was no bed of roses for a man, either, but women and children were disproportionately affected.

Then in the early years of the 20th century, we got cars. One of the advantages of a horse-drawn carriage is that it's actually quite difficult to make a horse run headlong into a tree, no matter how drunk the driver. In fact, I suspect many a drunk climbed into a carriage, said "home," passed out and came to at their house, the horse having gotten there by itself. Cars obviously don't do that. To make matters worse, the vehicles of the era were completely devoid of safety features, so even low-speed accidents could be fatal.

The clear and simple answer to these problems was to ban alcohol. No booze, no drunks, right?

The real solutions proved hard and non-intuitive, from easier divorce to welfare to jobs for women. They included treatment for alcoholism as a disease, dram shop laws, drunk-driving enforcement and safer cars. Finally, they included a reduced social acceptance of being drunk. Goodbye three-martini lunches, hello iced tea. Most all of this was enabled by government action.