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"Now that the Valley's companies are increasingly competing against traditional businesses, society is not so quick to give us a pass on this behavior. Take Airbnb and Uber again, both of which have attempted to avoid regulations and taxes in their fields (hotel taxes and taxi and license commission regulations, respectively). The tech press often writes these up as "disrupting" unwieldy government regulations, and to a degree, this is accurate (the best writers also mention that many of these laws were designed with consumers in mind, back when cabs and hotels were far less safe than they are now)."

"Between 2006-07 and 2011-12, average published tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities increased by about $1,800 in 2011 dollars, an annual rate of growth of 5.1% beyond inflation. The average net tuition and fees in-state students pay after taking grant aid from all sources and federal education tax credits and deductions into consideration increased by about $170 in 2011 dollars, an annual rate of growth of 1.4% beyond inflation."

"The average college student working full time at minimum wage earns $15,080 annually before taxes, the report estimates. "Working might eventually cover tuition at a two-year program," said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center and the report's lead author. "But the earnings aren't sufficient to even get close to covering a private, four-year school." "

"The U.S. Department of Education is sticking to the rosier news in a brief report released this week that shows the number of U.S. student-loan holders enrolled in income-based repayment plans has jumped by more than 50 percent since last year. According to the government, 3.9 million borrowers have signed up for income-based repayment plans as of this June. But while these programs, which have existed in some form since 1994 but were supercharged only in the past few years, can cut monthly loan payments by hundreds of dollars for individual borrowers, their cost to taxpayers overall is rising fast."