Reads of the Week: Breaking up Big Tech, Fixing College Tuition, and Appalachian Poverty
Each week, we’ll be featuring opinion pieces from the alumni and current participants of AF’s Writing Fellows Program. A few highlights from the past week are below. Do you dream of having bylines like these? Learn more about how the Writing Fellows Program can help boost your writing career!
Weaponizing Antitrust to Attack Big Tech Is Bad Idea by Trace Mitchell (Summer 2019) in Morning Consult
From the House Judiciary report calling for dramatic antitrust reform to federal antitrust regulators and state attorneys general initiating lawsuits against Facebook and Google, government officials are once again calling for more aggressive antitrust enforcement to go after America’s tech businesses.
And while critics from all sides are reaching for any and all tools to go after “Big Tech,” weaponizing antitrust will only end up harming American consumers and the American economy at a time when we’re still trying to keep our heads above water…
College Tuition Is Too High, But Competition Can Fix It by Preston Cooper (Fall 2015) in Forbes
Congressional Democrats’ demand that President Biden forgive $50,000 in student debt per borrower is regressive and unfair. But debt forgiveness also doesn’t address the reason so many borrowers complain that their student loans are unaffordable: college tuition is too expensive.
In 1996, the average four-year public college charged in-state students an average of $4,000 per year after institutional discounts. By 2016, that number had more than doubled to $8,800. Private colleges now charge students more than $20,000 after discounts…
Ask ‘How Can Appalachia Get Better?’ and Not ‘Why Is It Poor?‘ by Anthony Hennen (Spring 2019) in expatalachians
The question of why poverty is so persistent in Appalachia is popular because it’s not just an economic one—it touches on economics, psychology, political science, and sociology.
Expatalachians has previously covered why Appalachia is poor, and Nicholas Brumfield gives readers a useful overview of competing theories that try to answer the question. To get a better handle on the challenges in the region, one more explanation needs to be added: How geography shapes regions…