Social Security is one of very few domestic programs that have been both federally created and federally funded and are administered exclusively from Washington. It is a rare case of highly successful public policy that has been both popular and effective since its inception in 1935. Its main function is to pay cash benefits to those who have reached retirement age or suffered the death of a spouse and mainly seeks to provide an essential financial safety net beneath private savings. While Social Security has largely eliminated poverty among the elderly and is thought as being successful in redistributing wealth progressively, it is also felt by the public that the redistribution is unfair to young people and poorly targeted to well-off Americans.
In his book Why the Government Fails So Often, Schuck gives several reasons the Social Security enjoyed a good amount of policy success. One main reason is that even when the Social Security has grown steadily since its inception, both administrative costs and its error rate are very low. Because payments are calculated under a long-standing statutory formula, the agency need not exercise much discretion, case-by-case adjudication, or law enforcement, so …show more content…
After a number of small, temporary pilot programs dating back to the 1930s, Congress adopted the food stamp program on a permanent basis in 1964, and vastly expanded it ever since. SNAP was successful in quickly responding to the concerns of hungry children and poor people and in target efficiency. Of the almost forty-eight million participants at the end of 2012, roughly 45 percent are children, nearly 75 percent are in families with children, and more than 25 percent are in households with seniors or people with
In his book Why the Government Fails So Often, Schuck gives several reasons the Social Security enjoyed a good amount of policy success. One main reason is that even when the Social Security has grown steadily since its inception, both administrative costs and its error rate are very low. Because payments are calculated under a long-standing statutory formula, the agency need not exercise much discretion, case-by-case adjudication, or law enforcement, so …show more content…
After a number of small, temporary pilot programs dating back to the 1930s, Congress adopted the food stamp program on a permanent basis in 1964, and vastly expanded it ever since. SNAP was successful in quickly responding to the concerns of hungry children and poor people and in target efficiency. Of the almost forty-eight million participants at the end of 2012, roughly 45 percent are children, nearly 75 percent are in families with children, and more than 25 percent are in households with seniors or people with