It is better to have some of the questions rather than all of the answers
Here are some questions that I've been pondering related to income inequality, prices, and modernity in the U.S.
- Why has the price of a college degree skyrocketed in the last 30 years, and yet tenured professors don't get paid any more than they used to?
- Why do we want people to own homes so badly? Why are mortgagues are federally backed, and mortgage interest to be tax deductible still?
- Why is income always stratified into lower, middle, and upper class without talking about velocity, or class movement?
- Why are our doctors in this country paid more than every other country and yet if you ask them they feel like they work longer hours for less money than comparable earners in our society (Investment Bankers, Lawyers, etc)?
- Why does an X-ray cost about 1/15th of the price of an used X-ray machine? Similarly MRIs can cost ~$150,000 used and an MRI scan costs $3,000.
- Why are there almost as many homes sold as their are realtors in California?
- Why is life expectancy going down in the developed world?
- Why do we have to pay for published papers twice (once in taxes, second from the publisher)
- Why do we have to go through intuit (or similar) to file our taxes online?
- Why are more than half of software developers from computer science backgrounds despite 1) computer science not being explicitly a coding degree, and 2) learning software development is free online and easily available.
- Why does it cost $1 billion dollars to develop a drug?
- Why did the Ford Model T have the same fuel economy as the "average vehicle" for the Big 3 auto manufacturers in 2010?
- Why have half of the conservative presidents in the modern era been film/ television stars before becoming politicians?
- Why will people stand to pay $60 for a tablet of Tylenol during an emergency room visit? Why will insurance companies pay prices like that?
- Why is the cost of some surgeries equal to the price of a doctor's degree?