QWANZ

Wouldn’t it be nice if taxpayers could somehow get a refund for government programs that didn’t work?...   >>>

Wouldn’t it be nice if taxpayers could somehow get a refund for government programs that didn’t work?



Instead, the opposite tends to happen. Programs that fail to make a difference — like many of those that train workers for new jobs — endure indefinitely. Often, policy makers don’t even know which work and which don’t, because rigorous evaluation is rare in government. And competition, which punishes laggards in the private sector, is typically absent in the public sector.



But there is some good news on this front. Lately, both American and British policy makers have been thinking about how to bring some of the competitive discipline of the market to government programs, and they have hit on an intriguing idea.



[...]



The idea goes by one of two names: pay for success bonds or social impact bonds. Either way, nonprofit groups like foundations pay the initial money for a new program and also oversee it, with government approval. The government will reimburse them several years later, possibly with a bonus — but only if agreed-upon benchmarks show that the program is working.



If it falls short, taxpayers owe nothing.



**The excerpt is taken from NYT article, "For Federal Programs, a Taste of Market Discipline," written by David Leonhardt which is linked below. Do click through to read more about this intriguing idea.