Social Policy

In the highly unequal oligarchic America in which we live at present, calls to reallocate a fixed pool of revenue will meet with less powerful opposition than calls to tax the rich. We assume it is infeasible to expect the United States to build a generous welfare state in the mold of the Scandinavian social democracies. Proposals to use hyper targeted social policy to adjust the root causes of crime are similarly infeasible. To be efficient, a social policy intervention must meaningfully transform the opportunity structures of those most likely to commit crime.