The concept CCT plan seems like an ultimately beneficial idea. Despite many failures in certain areas, there were many successes. We can learn from this that any implemented CCT plan must be highly individualized based on different cities and areas and have a good balance of how much money goes into the program. The government is already giving out money to many that need it but adding an incentive to the poor to take the steps necessary for fixing the poverty cycle (going to school etc…) might end up lowering total costs. The program must be constantly monitoring its successes and failures while accepting criticism and using it to benefit the program in order to maintain optimal efficiency.
Archives
02
May 14
Body Economic part 3
Once again, Stuckler and Basu provide us with three new examples of how providing government funds is best for the country and its citizens while cutting funds may cause and increase in death rates. The NHS in the UK is losing popularity for reasons that are unexplainable since the country did well with the NHS. An effort made by the Swedish government to prevent suicide drastically paid off. The graphs given simply depict how while unemployment rates led to higher suicide rates in Italy and the US, Sweden saw a decrease in suicide rates despite higher rates of unemployment. The reason for it was the Sweden provided the ALMP which attempted to help people that were unemployed find jobs once again instead of simply handing them money. It seems then that motivating people to be productive counteracts the unemployed men wanting to commit suicide.
It is quite random that house foreclosures resulted in leaving pools as breeding grounds for mosquitoes in California. However, the rest of the statistics that resulted from homelessness occurred consistently.
25
Apr 14
Body Economics part II
The stories of Iceland and Greece are fairly parallel up to the point where Greece decides to listen to the IMF and cut spending from the country’s vitals. Iceland is small economy that grew primarily focused on banking, which meant that it was hit hard by the most recent global recession. Its options were simple: stay in debt for a few years while maintaining its high standard for public health and try some government stimulus plans or attempt to fix the debt right away by cutting spending on things the country cannot do without. Thankfully, they chose the first option. However, Greece when confronted with a similar problem, did not. Direct results were seen in HIV numbers. Basu and Stuckler stick to the their theme successfully. Cutting government spending does not work in solving huge government debts. The evidence in these two chapters shows how small countries are affected by the two opposing policies adopted. However, we have yet to see if Iceland’s policy would work in countries that are much larger and have much more complex economies than Iceland in the current attempt to fully recover from recent global recession. Signs point to yes, but either way, it’s clear that the worst thing a government can do is austerity.
