A good friend posted this cartoon on Fb this morning and it led to an fascinating dialogue.
Economist Roger Koppl wrote:
My second grade instructor informed us one of the best issues in life are free. After serious about her assertion I mentioned, “The very best issues in life are free, however it’s important to have the funds for to get pleasure from these free issues.” She stared at me for a second and replied in astonishment, “You’re proper.”
I responded to Roger: “OMG. You most likely ought to have identified in second grade that you just’d be an economist.”
After which that triggered a reminiscence of a dialog I had with a college instructor after I was in grade 2. (In Canada, that’s how we referred to second grade.) On this case the instructor was my father, who was principal of the college in our small city and so he was answerable for 1-12. (Thank goodness we didn’t have kindergarten; it gave me an additional yr of play.)
Once I was in grade 1, dad and mom had to purchase the textbooks for his or her children. There was an lively resale market and loads of dad and mom purchased used texts. Once I was about to begin grade 2, my father was all excited one night as a result of a authorities physique, both the native faculty board or, extra doubtless, the Manitoba provincial Division of Schooling, had determined that now not would dad and mom have to purchase books; they’d be supplied.
Right here’s the dialog that came about:
Dad: We are able to now get books totally free.
David: However who’s paying for them?
Dad: They’re free.
David: Ya, however who’s paying for them? They’ll’t be free to everybody. Somebody must be paying.
He relented and confessed that taxpayers would pay for them.
That’s after I ought to have identified that I might be an economist.
Right here’s a conjecture: When this motion unfold, each in Canada and the USA, the costs of textbooks, inflation-adjusted rose. The reason being that now not would the dad and mom really feel the impact of textbook costs immediately and so the textbook publishers would benefit from the dad and mom’ and the paperwork’s insensitivity to cost.