Saturday, June 13, 2009

Past Social Engineering: Unsound Financials Past, Present, and Future

Rewind to the 1960's and Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society". Rewind to the 1930's and "The New Deal" of Franklin Roosevelt. The Social Engineering Programs developed over the years are very familiar to every citizen: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.



The political aspects of Social Engineering aside, are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid programs well funded? Are the Economics of current entitlements sound? Its common knowledge that the programs mentioned above are not funded correctly and pose a huge unfunded liability stretching well into the future. That benefits outweigh the funding.



In other words, the Social Engineering programs of the past are broken and need repaired. Does it make good Political Economy to add additional Social Engineering Programs to a current system in disrepair?



Rewinding again to the 1960's and 1930's, the above mentioned Social Engineering plans, when initially debated and consequently introduced, were these programs portrayed as Financially Sound? When the politics were debated for these Social Engineering Plans the public was sold on the sound financial nature of the plans. Back to the future in 2009, the plans are a financial nightmares.



Wouldn't any new Social Engineering Program be portrayed by supporters as Financially Sound? Of course it would. Plenty of charts and graphs showing the social benefit and the soundness of the proposed cost/revenue. However, since we know the track record of past Social Engineering Programs as financially unsound, why would we believe any new entitlement program would be financially sound?



Before any further debate occurs regarding National Health Care aka Socialized Medicine, the financial dynamics of entitlements of the past need addressed and solved.

No comments:

Post a Comment