Government Incentives Lead to Corruption, Waste, Irresponsibility, and Failure

It comes as no surprise every government incentive plan leads corruption, waste, and irresponsibility which, in turn, inevitably leads to failure. This site and conservative sites alike point to failures of many government incentive plans such as welfare. Welfare includes subsidies for food, housing, unemployment, and healthcare. These plans simply move money from wealthy citizens to poor citizens and do not to provide any incentives for the poor to find work or education to get a better paying job. The goal of any government incentive plan should be to maximize economic growth. And that means everyone should be responsible and contribute to the system and not just hold the top 10% of all earners accountable. On paper wealth distribution sounds great (especially to the poor), but this is socialism and it has failed time and time again throughout history simply because government incentives are misguided and lead to a lazy populous.

Our educational system is another example of how the wrong types of incentives lead to corruption and failure. Each week there is news of a school system “cooking” the books on test scores. Administrators, teachers, and other officials are guilty of this because it could save their jobs as well as lead to more funding for the school district. The first failure here is that the government (local, state, and federal) place too much of an emphasis on a plethora of test scores – it is simply paralysis by over analysis. The second failure is to not have the tests given and scored by neutral observers.

It seems every week we can see another example of government incentives gone awry. Let’s examine the root cause of the Veterans Administration (VA) healthcare scandal. An inquiry into the situation found a majority of VA hospitals and clinics were negligent in caring for our veterans. The wait time for an appointment was, on average, over six months and worse yet; some veterans never got an appointment. The VA had a goal of having veteran appointments set in 2 weeks or less. In fact, the VA provided bonuses based on meeting this requirement. The result, many VA facilities were “cooking” the appointment books to meet the VA appointment standards and receive falsified bonuses. Obviously, one correction from the inquire is to no longer provide bonuses based on the wait time system since this incentive lead directly to corruption, waste, and a complete failure of the system which resulted in the deaths of the very people who have protected our freedoms.

The Burgdahl scandal is yet another example of government incentives gone awry. The Obama administration traded the top 5 Taliban enemy combatants for a very “bad” soldier who disserted and collaborated with the enemy. Hence, terrorist organizations now know this administration will negotiate with them to trade prisoners. Hence, in the future, terrorist organizations now understand the advantages of taking hostages. Therefore, Obama has provided our enemies with an incentive to attack and capture Americans.