PJ Media

I think the pre-school analogy fails. Pre-school is not widely demanded because it isn’t seen as socially necessary. Pre-schools, for the most part, are demanded as a luxury. That’s why they’re primarily aimed at the upper-classes.

But like all private goods, there tends to be a trickle down effect. Just think of PCs in the 80s. They were luxuries, but as we figured out better and cheaper ways of making PCs, their prices fell, they spread to the public, and now are widely enjoyed. As Hayek says:

“The experience of the US at least seems to indicate that, once the rise in the position of the lower classes gathers speed, catering to the rich ceases to be the main source of great gain and gives place to efforts directed toward the needs of the masses. Those forces which at first make inequality self-accentuating thus later tend to diminish it.”

Many people COMPLAIN that capitalism has this effect because it cheapens the quality of products for the masses. But it is a widely acknowledged phenomenon. So Laura is probably right to think that *at some one point in time* a potential ‘fantasy voucher’ market will look like the pre-school market, but over time, I think we can expect things to trickle down. Why? Because that’s what tends to be most profitable – selling a cheap good to many rather than an expensive good to a few.

There are other complaints to make about vouchers, to be sure. But the worry that most people won’t have educational options on the market is not one of them.

P.S. It’d be nice to not hear anything obnoxious about the phrase ‘trickle down’ in the comments below. I’m not using it in the Reagan sense.