Neoclassicalists will Always, Every Time point at the government as the Only possible cause of the market not working.

It's pure ideology. They have the exact same answer every time regardless of circumstances, like some radical evangelical responding to every question with "god".

It's not economics, ration, reason or anything like that - it's pure orthodoxy and blind dogmatism. They're Hayekian tankies.

> It's not economics, analysis, reason or anything like that - it's pure orthodoxy and blind dogmatism.

It would be rich if the data in the article in no way supported your rant.

It doesn't.

Just like the evangelicals see God in every leaf and water drop, the neoclassicalists will read any evidence and always see the same conclusion.

The article doesn't blame government at all. It's way more nuanced but ideologues will only see what they want to see.

I was talking about the "average cost of private school" data. Which part is a slam dunk on "neoclassical" econ? Or even the original article. I'm not disagreeing just curious how you came to that conclusion.

The data linked above suggests Catholic schools are the most affordable. Priors confirmed - theocracy is the only way forward.

I was responding to an author in the thread, not to the author of the article.

Catholic schools are financially structured in rather unique ways. They're controlled by clerical orders which are technically financially independent from the Vatican, kind of like a franchise.

Together, the institutions under a specific clerical order operate collectively kind of like a cooperative so money flows around differently than most schools.

Weirdly, schools that used to be but no longer are religious seem to now be some of the most expensive. For instance, Tufts, USC and Yale.

The rise in tuition is because college has been increasingly seen as a personal, private transaction and not as a social good.

This reframing of the institution as a market based services purchase is the rationale for the policies that have caused all the other problems

Catholic schools might also be cheaper because these clerical orders are ostensibly tasked with social welfare so they are still partially operating under the old model before the Milton Friedman mind virus.

> This reframing of the institution as a market based services purchase is the rationale for the policies that have caused all the other problems

Monks around the world are telling themselves "THIS GUY GETS IT". The institution misses its alma mater :(

This said nothing about the number of seats in private schools versus public ones. If there are very few then we should expect private costs to increase dramatically as public costs increase. Not every student gets public loans, some students come from wealthy families that have other means of financing. If public is $100k, then these families would still likely choose the $120k private school for better outcomes. There is no reason for private to stay cheap.

What is the rate of increase, and how does it compare to CPI inflation?

There is a chart at the bottom. Costs doubled over twenty years since 1999, directly comparable to the college rate over the same period and well above inflation.

This says that the average private highschool tuition is $15,645.

In 2003, the average private highschool tuition was $8,412 (Snyder, Dillow, & Hoffman, 2008), or $14,079 (in today's dollars).

Please correct me if I've made some mistake, but plugging those numbers in shows that the annualized real increase in price is 0.5% per year over 20 years.

The first bullet says: “$23,839 is the average annual tuition among the nation’s private K-12 schools.”