The Politics Guys

In November of 2016, I had the opportunity to interview  George Mason economist Bryan Caplan about his book The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. It’s a book I not only enjoyed, but one I’ve been assigning in my economic policy class for years.

Recently, Caplan came out with a new book, once again with a provocative title: The Case against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money. I’m looking forward to getting a copy (it was just released on January 30) and, with any luck, having him back on the show.

While I haven’t read the book, I do know the basic argument, and it’s one I find myself somewhat in agreement with. Caplan believes that most of what students learn in college doesn’t really help them when they’re in the ‘real world’. If that’s true, why do college graduates make so much more than people without a degree? It’s mainly do to signaling, Caplan thinks.

What a college degree mainly signals to potential employers is that the degree holder knows how to jump through hoops, that they can give people in positions of authority (professors, like me) what they want, and that they were organized and determined enough to slog through four (or five, or six) years and somewhere between 40 – 50 classes.

I’m sure you can see the value of this information to employers. And of course, college has other benefits that have nothing to do with economic utility – things like exposure to new ideas, meeting different people, playing (or watching) college sports, and so much more.

But how much are all these benefits worth? Are they worth the $80 billion (excluding loans) the federal government spent on higher education in 2014? Are they worth the $90.5 billion that state and local governments spent in 2016? Are they worth the nearly $1.5 trillion in student loan debt graduates are currently saddled with?

In one interview, Caplan suggested that only around five percent of people need a traditional four-year degree – about the percentage of Americans with a degree in 1945, before the G.I. Bill transformed higher education.

Five percent seems low to me – right now, we’re at just over 33 percent, and while I agree with Caplan that there are lots of people with degrees that didn’t teach them anything ‘useful’ (in an economic sense), I can’t imagine us ever wanting to get much below 20 percent. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to discuss this and more with Bryan Caplan sometime within the next few months.

I’d love to know what you think. Was your college experience worth the cost in both money and time? Do you think a system that dramatically reduces the number of people in college – presumably along with a major expansion of technical education – would be a good idea? You can send me your thoughts at mike@politicsguys.com.

The immigration plan released by the Trump administration this week provides legal status and a path to citizenship for 1.8 million Dreamers. Of course, any immigration proposal that has the support of hard-liners Stephen Miller and Tom Cotton is going to contain some pretty tough provisions, as this one does. There are plenty of things in the plan that I  think Democrats are right to resist. But lately, I’ve begun to wonder if we should be willing to give some ground on what many see as an absolute deal-breaker: funding an expanded border wall.

Exactly how much of a wall President Trump wants is unclear, though Fortune puts it at 722 total miles, most of which would update the 653 miles of currently existing ‘wall’ (a combination of actual walls, various types of fencing, and vehicle barriers). I think walling off nearly 40 percent of our border with Mexico sends a horrible symbolic message, and it may not even be the most effective way to limit illegal immigration. (Believe it or not, there’s been almost no high quality research on this.) But a bigger border wall is a price I might be willing to pay to help out those nearly two million Dreamers – if it’s the right kind of wall.

What if, instead of some hulking concrete eyesore, we went with something more aesthetically pleasing, like a variant of the below proposed design?

Not only does it look a lot better than much of what already exists, there are environmental and security benefits too. The open structure lets water flow, small animals can get through, and U.S. Border Patrol agents can see what’s happening on the other side (sort of -at least more than with a solid wall).

If I were negotiating a border wall deal, I’d want a provision giving border wall communities funds for ‘wall beautification’ projects – say $5,000 for each 100 foot section. I’d mandate that the money go to local artists, picked by residents of the communities. The total cost for this, along the entire wall, would be about 190 million dollars initially, though I’d push for that funding to be automatically renewed every 5 years (adjusted for inflation) to keep the wall art fresh and relevant. That would be a significant boost for artists – and not the sort of ‘liberal coastal elite’ artists that so many conservatives decry, but local artists.

Is this a ridiculous idea? Maybe. But if President Trump is willing to make significant concessions in exchange for his ‘big, beautiful wall’ we should at least consider if we can counter with a wall that’s worth the trade-off.

This week, I got a call from the nursing supervisor at my mom’s assisted living community. She told me that my mom needed to have a minor outpatient procedure performed, and asked if I wanted to take her. I did, which was how I spent most of my Friday morning.

In thinking about the experience, a few things struck me. First, when the nursing supervisor called, she simply told me where the procedure would be taking place, and I automatically accepted that. It didn’t even occur to me to ask why that was the outpatient center her doctor had chosen and what, if any, other options there were. I’m someone who comparison shopped for days before buying a new laptop, but when it came to an invasive (albeit minor) medical procedure, I didn’t shop around at all. But even if I had, it would have been incredibly difficult for me to get any solid information about pricing and quality, because that’s just not how things work in American medicine.

The last thing I did before my mom had her procedure was to pay the bill. Except it wasn’t a bill – not exactly. When the administrative person told me there would be a charge of $127.19, the oddness of that number struck me and so I asked her how she arrived at that figure. “It’s our best guess as to what you mother will owe after insurance.” Best guess – that was the phrase she used. How absolutely bizarre, and yet I accepted it and paid the ‘best-guess bill’.

People can – and have – written books about this craziness. I’ve even taught an entire course about the extreme weirdness of American health care policy. I’m planning on doing a series of blog posts that examine various aspects of our broken health care market (blog posts that will later become short podcast episodes). For now, I’ll recommend this article from the always excellent Kaiser Health News site (my go-to place for health policy news) about why doctors and hospitals are pushing back hard against attempts to make medical pricing more transparent.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about football. It’s NFL playoff season, which would normally mean that I’d be glued to my TV set. But this year something changed. Over the last few years I’ve been reading plenty of articles about football and brain trauma. It seems very clear to me that professional football, as it’s currently played, is very bad for the long-term health of players. Yet I kept on watching, though with a growing sense of discomfort. But something changed after I witnessed the awful spinal injury suffered by Steelers’ linebacker Ryan Shazier. From that point on, I found that I could no longer enjoy the game like I used to. And so I quit watching.

It may seem strange to non football fans, but the decision has left a noticeable void in my life. I know that there are inherent risks in football, but I also know that the rules could be changed to far better protect players. And the government could play an important role in this, like it did back in 1905, when President Theodore Roosevelt (my all-time favorite president, if you didn’t already know), brought top college coaches together to make the sport less brutal. Some even claim that by doing so, T.R. saved the game.

I say it’s time for the federal government to once again intervene. It seems unlikely that President Trump will do so, as he’s actually remarked that today’s NFL is too soft, and that the game has been ‘ruined’ by rules designed to better protect players.  But under a different president (something I hope will be the case in January of 2021), Congress could pressure the NFL to make some major player-safety changes by threatening to revoke the league’s anti-trust exemption.  What sort of changes might make a real difference? Physician Paul Auerbach has what I think are some good ideas concerning that.