LTE: Eyeballing education costs

In "Apple victory could be a loss for consumer" (Tuesday Business Section), commentator James Temple worries whether American companies successfully defending their patents against theft is a good thing.  It's strange the things we prioritize to worry about.  K through 12 public education now costs American taxpayers over $10,000 per student per year for a generally terrible product, but Mr. Temple is worried about whether Apple might get a monopoly for products that cost a few hundred bucks - and work flawlessly.  Ditto for a college education, which costs close to $15,000 per year and turns out a very mediocre product.  Health care now costs taxpayers and ratepayers over $8,000 per patient per year, yet we are less and less healthy every year.

 

The one thing these businesses all have in common is that they truly are monopolies, and their pricing is not subject to the open market as is Apple's.  Perhaps Mr. Temple ought to worry about them a bit.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

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Eyeballing education costs

In "Apple victory could be a loss for consumer" (Page B6, Tuesday), commentator James Temple worries whether American companies successfully defending their patents against theft is a good thing. It's strange the things we prioritize to worry about. Kindergarten through 12th grade public education now costs American taxpayers over $10,000 per student per year for a generally terrible product, but Temple is worried about whether Apple might get a monopoly for products that cost a few hundred bucks - and work flawlessly. Ditto for a mediocre college education. Health care now costs taxpayers and ratepayers over $8,000 per patient per year, yet we are less and less healthy every year.

The one thing these businesses all have in common is that they truly are monopolies, and their pricing is not subject to the open market as is Apple's.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/letters/article/Letters-Education-costs-wind-energy-Astros-3832050.php

LTE: USS Texas

Regarding "FEMA to put Elissa on even keel" (Page B2, Thursday), imagine how pleased I was to find that FEMA could restore this Texas landmark simply by writing a check: no fuss, no muss, no anxiety.

Seeing as how the battleship USS Texas also got its hair mussed by our last few hurricanes, perhaps FEMA could write us a slightly bigger check to take care of our problems there.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-Food-stamps-liberals-Lubbock-hysteria-3819211.php

Romney's Taxes?

Regarding "Obama campaign presses Romney on taxes" (Saturday Nation), in the middle of a national economic meltdown, the only thing more bizarre than a presidential candidate devoting so much time to such a triviality as Romney's taxes is the Media's failure to comment on the Obama campaign's obsession with the matter.  Seems to me that if the IRS is happy with Romney's returns, that President Obama and everybody else ought to be as well.  Put it another way: would the Media be so lacking an opinion if Romney went on for weeks about Obama's birth certificate?

 

Meanwhile, Nero fiddles while Rome burns.

 

Pete Smith

Cypress

LTE: NASA's Bad Direction; Bogged down

Regarding "Can NASA keep curiosities piqued?" (Page A1, Tuesday), the article bemoans NASA's troubles and the threat of being eclipsed by private-sector companies such as SpaceX. It then goes on to say that "few can dispute that NASA can still do great things." Unfortunately, since the moon landings, NASA has done most everything wrong, with the exception of the Hubble telescope and a small sprinkling of other projects.

Well before the moon program was done, NASA rolled the dice on what was arguably the biggest boondoggle in the history of space exploration: the shuttle program. Only a berserk bureaucracy would think it a good idea to launch a multistory building into space for the mundane purpose of delivering a handful of astronauts or a minuscule payload into low Earth orbit, much less claim - as NASA did in the '70s - that the shuttle would accomplish this for a launch cost of $100 per pound.

As we now know, they miscalculated by several orders of magnitude, with a single shuttle launch costing well over $1 billion. It was decisions like this that destroyed the American space program, killed dozens of Curiosity-style programs and delayed by decades the innovation of companies like SpaceX.

Pete Smith, Cypress

http://www.chron.com/default/article/Letters-NASA-the-good-and-the-ugly-3780037.php