And it could be a good springboard for class discussion. What kinds of things can government do better than you?
Here's an argument for five specific things:
The big four?
- retirement insurance
- health care
- addressing poverty
- disaster relief
Then there are the little things like road construction etc....
From the story:
The conservative approach to government stems from a basic tenet of
free-market economics: that people always act rationally to maximize
their own benefits, and that from this rises a general state of
well-being for society as a whole. But this isn’t always true. One of
the hottest academic disciplines to arise in the last few decades is
behavioral economics, which explores the ways in which people behave
irrationally. In addition, easy-predictable problems with certain
markets prevent us from achieving the best outcomes. These two facts
have consequences for how we should think about government in certain
instances. There are many ways in which the government can make better
decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the
Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government
programs.
