3 Unstoppable Trends of the 21st Century

William Jennings Bryan dominated the debate concerning government’s role in providing a safety net for Americans during the latter part of the 19th century with his ideas of government social welfare and concern for the common man.  His ideas proved to be valid but a little too early for his time, as most of his ideas became public policy during the 1930’s.  These policies have dominated the public policy arena for most of the 20th century.  

Now the pendulum of public policy has shifted away from a large government role to one of increasing levels of individual responsibility.  I believe Mr. Bryan would have led this change. The undue emphasis on a powerful government will be corrected by implementing free market and consumer driven policies that achieve the noble social and community goals that he had for the country. The American people are freedom loving and very suspicious of a large government.  They do not want to continue down the road toward socialism. 

Therefore, more choice and freedom must be the basis for any modification of our existing system.  Americans want truth and have always been able to rise to the challenge of being responsible with their freedoms.  There is common ground between those who emphasize government solutions to social problems with those who desire a minimal role for government. The trend towards individual empowerment and responsibility is an unstoppable trend. The shift is major however, and will take significant time to be fully implemented.  Accumulated power and momentum is difficult to change. However, the change has already begun.

The first area that will change is our pubic education system. Education has come under the spotlight because we are falling behind in educational results.  The failure of our public educational system hinders us from being competitive in the new global economy.  There is a crisis in our present system. We have no other option but to implement improvements that are far reaching and will improve overall performance.  Further we should realize that we must provide an education for all our citizens that allow them to become a contributing member of society.  The trend toward parental choice is a major solution that will allow us to bring our education system to produce the necessary level of performance. School and parental choice will also allow us to generate more creative alternatives to our present system. Examples of solutions that work are the rapid growth of charter schools and the increasing experimentation with school vouchers.  The monopolization of public education that favors administration and teachers over the student must change.  Another key consideration is the shining success of Christian schools and home schools.  They demonstrate the clear success that creative alternatives would provide. The movement to parental choice in education would also give rise to faith based organizations to become involved in reaching out to the under privileged to provide education choices to those who need assistance. Clearly, the availability of choice and freedom should benefit the low income the most.  For those not willing to take advantage of the new choices, a traditional public approach to education would still be available.

Choice will also affect the subject of social ills. Government is beginning to recognize the value of using faith based programs to complement and assist in achieving social goals.  Our country has a great heritage of being committed to assisting those in poverty, and other social and personal traps.  Most of this assistance, similar to education, was provided by the private sector specifically Christian based organizations. A large part of this private system was slowly turned over to the government in the early part of the 20th century.  Now it is clear that cooperation between the government programs and private faith based services is the most efficient and effective way to reach the social goals of our country.  One example of this cooperation is in the area of alcohol and drug addiction.  Here we see, for example, how the public sector can provide the detoxification service and provide choices in the private sector for the longer term recovery phase.  It has been demonstrated that Faith based programs often exceed the performance outcomes of government programs.  People should have a choice.

Perhaps the most current societal problem and challenge to us as a nation is in the area of health care.  Something has to be done to control the persistent rise in the cost of health care. Currently the Federal government spends 40% of all health care dollars.  Third parties have always dominated our health care system but especially during the last 40 years. Patients have been insulated from prices when they receive healthcare.  They do not currently make choices based on the value of healthcare compared to its cost. There are two basic approaches to solve the problems of cost in the current system.  One relies on a large government role in delivering health care services.  The other approach emphasizes the role of the private sector and uses it whenever possible.  The unstoppable trend is the rise of a consumer oriented free market health care system. This alternative has recently become part of the main stream of realistic proposals to solve the health care problem. This plan allows for a healthcare savings account (HSA) in conjunction with a catastrophic health insurance policy.  This approach actually allows the consumer to pay less out of his pocket in a worse case scenario, and at the same time accumulate money in his HSA based on his careful choice of needed services. The key to this alternative is empowering the individual to be responsible for their own health care.  For this trend to take hold and become popular there needs to be equality in the area of tax deductibility for the individual that is the same for the employee who has group health insurance.  The HSA approach will force national standards for health insurance and insurance will be sold across state boundaries to further stimulate competition..  A consumer approach to health care will allow for more creative alternatives to pay for those currently unable to obtain health insurance.  The consumer oriented approach is clearly an approach with great promise and will be widely accepted and promoted by the consumer.  A large government and third party solution to health care has proven to be ineffective, especially in the area of primary care

In conclusion, there are three areas where the trend away from government as a solution is waning.  The direction toward a consumer focused solution appears to be unstoppable.  The key areas are education, social welfare, and healthcare. All have the consumer front and center as the one driving the change.  These trends are relentless. Just as the movement toward a larger role for government began in the early part of the 20th century, the consumer directed approach will be the driving force towards solutions in the 21st century.  The real question is how fast these changes will be made.