A social scientist’s dream is to be able to do experiments with policy. One of my personal favorite ideas has been to cut all entitlements for 12 months. Especially if done by a Democratic President during his second year in office, I imagine that there might be a dramatic change in electorate opinion.
Republicans can tout it as a (short-term) win for their platform. After a year though, we’ll see if people vote with their wallets or their bibles. An important element of this experiment would be to apply the unused funds toward the deficit, such that the Medicare/Medicaid/Food Stamps/Unemployment/Social Security checks that people would get would be irretrievably gone. Thus, you include deficit magnitude in the conversation (otherwise, there would be the option to let people have the money after a year similar to how federal employees get paid for a government shutdown after it’s over.)
And if people really don’t like entitlements, there’s good reason based on that sentiment to cut them all together and reduce everyone’s taxes. Similarly, if the blue states wish to have state-based entitlements, that’s their prerogative. However, given that people — such as the Republicans who benefit from federal funds — like their money, I doubt it will come to that point. Rather, I think we might skip over several generations of slow liberalization on entitlements to eventually approach the European safety net. We won’t be Scandinavia but it’ll be better than what we have now.
Of course, this is all conjecture … and a social scientist’s on the shelf experiment.
Red State Socialism
