Sure, I hear people bitch about it, but they’re strangely silent about rural school districts where the eligibility rates are >50%.
There’s lots of evidence in support of food stamps (SNAP), including potentially reducing crime.
I’m not saying no government social programs are ever successful. I’m just saying it depends on your definition of success, including how you balance out various competing priorities. And at a minimum it requires a more in depth look at all the various direct and indirect impacts of the program and its different components, versus simply pointing to the positive aspects of the program and declaring it a success on that basis alone (as most of the posts to this thread have been doing).
And once again I ask you which(if any) government programs are successful according to your terms?
I can give two small-scale examples from personal experience: the Travel to Interview Scheme funded the trip that got me my last job. I couldn’t have afforded the fare or the petrol otherwise. Secondly, the DWP sent me on an employment skills course, which taught me how to interview, how to target my CV, how to rewrite my CV, and much more.
On a wider scale, consider the military. I’m thinking of the UK military here, not the US. Think of all those enlisted personnel who would otherwise be unemployed, thugs, criminals, or worse, and how they and their children progress after leaving the services.
Fluoridation, vaccination, education and social security, off the top of my head.
To play devil’s advocate for a moment, are any of these necessarily required to be government programs? If some other organization collected ~12% of your paycheck each week to give to disabled people and retirees, would it be any less effective?
My understanding is that the Mormons are pretty good at supporting members in need from tithes, though a lot of the money goes to other things, of course.
However any such organization would need monitoring to avoid fraud. So does the government, but elections and the legislature provide at least some accountability.
United Way took a smaller percentage of money from paychecks (often with intense pressure) but there have been all sorts of problems in some places.
Not with the very low level of risk Social Security has. Libertarians may complain that we are blind to the downside of government programs (not true) but they are blind to the downsides of private programs, like market risk. Thaler and Sunstein showed that in Sweden, where the social security like program involves investing in one of a set of funds, people pick the ones with the highest values which are most at risk of dropping in value - buy high, sell low.
Libertarians seem blind also to the findings of behavioral economics and judgement decision making research, which shows that people do not make decisions in the ideal rational way that libertarianism depends on. Retirement savings is an excellent example.
No, it is a success if it is better than the alternative. Plus you have to look at the downsides of private solutions also.
What would the state of medical care for the elderly be today without Medicare, for instance? I recognize the downsides - we need more funding, doctors would like to get paid more, drugs are too expensive, but on the whole Medicare has been a big win.
Of course. That doesn’t contradict my point here.
Not all these are what I would call “downsides” in this context. A program not being perfect is not a downside. A program being worse in some sense than the alternative is a downside.
[Doctors being paid less is the only one I see, from what you’ve listed. The cost of the plan itself would be another. Also, Medicare can limit the available provider choices due to its rules about accepting assignment.]
I haven’t read all of the posts, but I assume Social Security has been talked about already (it was the first response in the thread), so I’ll go with the interstate highway system. Sorry if it’s been mentioned already. Granted, it was really a military project initially, but it was also social engineering on a continental scale and I’d go with it being one of the best examples of a clear success story for a government social program. No way could you get private industry, on its own, to build something like that, since the ROI would be…well, never, even if you crushed the economy by making everything a toll. Just wouldn’t happen.
I was going to say the manned space program, but maybe a better example would just be the space program in general. This would be my second choice. The US has, collectively, made huge discoveries with its space program, with a list of mission successes and achievements that no other country has come close to. Again, it’s not something that private industry would have been able to achieve, IMHO, as the ROI just isn’t there (yet). And I think both of these examples pave the way for future economic benefits to the whole nation. Certainly, the interstate highway system has paid off big time for the US, and I think that, eventually, space will do the same.
The key word in both of those points is, of course, “could.” It assumes a level of rationality and self-discipline that even the best of us probably aspire to more than we actually achieve.
People could also, just as easily, piss away their retirement savings on pyramid schemes, or short-term financial needs. The concept of Social Security saves those of us who aren’t paragons of financial savvy and self-control (i.e., nearly all of us) from the worst of those impulses.
*On edit: essentially, what **Voyager *had already said in their reply. 
That was the official policy before 1935 and it worked just fine then.:dubious: Back in those days, poor people could go to the county poorhouse, or they could be dependent on their children, which was the case for a majority of them.
Can’t argue with that. A program is not better just because it is a government program. It could be better if it provides more to more people than a private program does.
I’ve seen people object to Medicare because the cost is increasing. This is due to the increase in healthcare costs, of course, but if there was no Medicare it wouldn’t be a government problem.
As is the case of much basic research, the government funding is great for things too risky for private companies to do - especially with the demise of monopolies or near monopolies like IBM and AT&T which could fund basic research.
But since we have the basic work done and the proof of concept, this is a great time to turn space travel over to private companies - and at least a few are stepping up. If they start succeeding I bet we see a lot more jumping in, just like we are seeing now with autonomous vehicles.
Yeah - as long as it remains solvent. The idea of medicare - and universal health care - is sound. But the reality of seniors soaking up treatment costing far more than they ever contributed, while living longer and longer … Well, we’ll see.
While we’re at it on government research programs, how about the Internet?
Voyager already provided excellent answers to that in #28, but let me add one more. With respect to #1, there is absolutely no reason that governments, like any large institutions, could not beneficially exploit the private market, too, and do it a lot more effectively than individual small investors. This is exactly the basis for well-managed pension funds and other institutional investors leveraging their power of scale and financial clout to do far better than Joe Sixpack acting on a stock tip from his brother-in-law’s friend’s cousin. I only wish that my personal investments were as well managed, for instance, as those of the independent investment board managing the public assets of the Canada Pension Fund.
What matters is not whether a particular program to solve a particular social problem is public or private – or whether it panders to some delusional paranoia about government – but whether it works, whether it has the right goals and incentives, whether it’s sustainable, and whether it produces a structurally healthier and more stable society.
And Point #2 is just stupid – the libertarian equivalent of Marxist idealism but on the opposite end of the spectrum. It informs us that if everyone was rich and financially savvy and prudent we wouldn’t need social programs. Yeah. :rolleyes:
Let’s not forget that some of my earlier contributions have 40 years of compound interest accumulated, so you can’t just tot up the contributions and compare them to the payout. Yeah I know Medicare is pay as you go, but you have to count interest when assessing fairness.
My father-in-law died at almost 101 (cheaply) but only used a few years of Medicare. His group insurance from the schools he taught at got canceled when he was the only survivor of the group.
But, would you prefer not treating seniors, or trying to get private insurance to do it at an affordable cost? I agree with Fotheringay-Phipps that you need to compare the program with something. Otherwise you run into the same problem the Republicans have run into - promise to take something down while not having anything reasonable to replace it with.
Libertarians do not deny that if the government takes resources and disperses the loot that some people will benefit. It’s actually one of the reasons we oppose government intervention. I’m sure someone who benefits from coerced payments into Medicare by prematurely deceased individuals is quite happy with the arrangements.
The OP asked if interventions are “worth” the cost. This cannot be deduced because governments deal in involuntary exchange where the participants’ values are not demonstrated by voluntary action, as they would be in a mutual exchange.