Morning Links: Uniting Monday Haters with the Crazies who Love to Get Back to Work

So in case you started your weekend really early and spent most of it in a blacked out haze with uncomfortable periods of sobriety/hung-overness, I'm sure you are aware that your favorite NFL team just made some pretty big decisions over the weekend at the 2012 NFL Draft. If you're really not happy to be back at work right now, this is probably a pretty excellent thing to review as it can probably get you to at least lunchtime before you have to get into an excel spreadsheet to do some real work. CR is pretty happy with our pick, especially since if it doesn't work the Giants could probably just start a circus.

BREAKING NEWS - NORTH KOREAN ROCKET FAILS, MAY TEST NUKE INSTEAD

The number of jokes about the tyrannical North Korean regime have increased exponentially, but watch out - they have the bomb.

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Responses?

P.S. Thanks to Matt for the warm welcome! Looking forward to the debates.

Morning News: Daily News Headlines and Events

Santorum checks out of GOP primary race, sets up Romney as clear frontrunner against Obama

George Zimmerman, Neighborhood Vigilante, charged with 2nd-degree murder in Trayvon Martin case

Kim Jong-Un polishes his rocket, ready to blow

Steve Jobs still an asshole from beyond the grave, gets Apple sued by DOJ over e-book price-setting "conspiracy"

Should Higher Education Be Free?

The first topic CONFLICT REVOLUTION will tackle is one relevant to every young person currently navigating their way through a competitive job market and economy: in a world where college is increasingly common (even necessary), what role should government play in subsidizing its high - and growing - cost? A remote coin toss has determined that Stephen gets to go first this week; Matt responds below.

Posted by Stephen, 12/8/11:

Should higher education be free? Well it would certainly be nice if it were. But that would require professors to stop demanding pay for their time (which would most likely make all but the most dedicated change their career path - as well as starving all those who foolishly do become professors); mandate that administrators do the same; ditto for all those who are the support staff at universities. Or we can ignore this ridiculous scenario and head to what our topic really means, since education does cost money, someone must pay. Thus our topic really becomes: Should the taxpayer subsidize higher education? Further, since subsidizing ALL higher education would be far too costly, let us focus on just subsidizing a segment of the population that I’m sure my leftist companion will define the"99%" or everyone minus "millionaires and billionaires” i.e.families making $250,000 or more.

One, it turns out that government subsidizes in education doesn’t do much to control cost, but I doubt there was any shocker there. In fact, government subsidies have done nothing more than to push prices up. As Virginia Postrel in Bloomberg Business Week writes:

It’s a phenomenon familiar to economists. If you offer people a subsidy to pursue some activity requiring an input that’s in more-or-less fixed supply, the price of that input goes up. Much of the value of the subsidy will go not to the intended recipients but to whoever owns the input.

Two, government intervention has spurred an industry of “for profit colleges” which charge high prices and provide low quality educations. These colleges target lower income demographics and look to pump them through the system with government debt. When they graduate, employment prospects are not much higher.

More on paying for college after the jump...