Stupid question of the day . . .
Bernie Madoff got 150 years in jail… seems about right to me.
So I was reading about this Harry Markopolos, the guy who repeatedly warned people about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. What made this guy suspicious about Madoff was the fact that Madoff’s fund kept going up and up year after year, with no fluctuations relative to the market.
So this got me to thinking, what other things continually go up year after year, with no regard to market forces?
Sad to say, two things that came to mind immediately are . . . education and healthcare.
Every single year it seems, college tuition and healthcare costs keep rising. They never seem to go down or stay the same. This strikes me as odd. Shouldn’t there be some supply and demand effect happening somewhere, sometime? Shouldn’t all these wonder drugs and new technologies we have at least occasionally cause a temporary lull in demand on the health-care system, driving prices down? And shouldn’t variations in birth rates and/or endlessly rising costs occasionally result in fewer students applying to college, again causing prices to go down? Apparently not.
Since these costs are always rising at a greater rate than inflation, inflation is not the culprit either .
So, if it’s not inflation, and it’s not market forces, what is it? Why do the prices for these services consistently go up, and never go down, year after year?
