Policy Alternatives

Policy Alternatives

Taxes, retirement, and financial policies are some of the most controversial areas of policy development. There are a variety of opinions, data sources, and expert reports out there on each of these areas. Therefore, along with all proposed policy, it is important that we can evaluate each policy. In this week’s lesson, we discussed the three primary and five ancillary evaluative criteria that Kraft considers essential in analyzing policies. So let’s put this information into practice.

Let’s take a look at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank. I want you to chose one of the articles from either the taxes tab: (http://www.ncpa.org/taxes/) or the retirement tab (http://www.ncpa.org/retirement).

For your post:

(1) Summarize the key points made within the article.

(2) Now, select at least three evaluative criteria from this week’s lesson to analyze the points made in the article. For example, did the author address the equity of the policy and if so, what did they say? If they didn’t address it, what do you think the author would have said about the missing evaluative criteria?

(3) Analyze the policy alternatives (eg, including a liberal think tank) for your selected policy topic/article.

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One of the sources must come from:
Kraft, Michael and Scott Furlong. (2015) Public Policy: Politics, Analysis, and Alternatives. Sage Press.
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WEEK READING INFO
There are three primary evaluative criteria and five other criteria outlined in our course text. They are: 1) effectiveness – which concerns how well a policy achieves its goal; 2) efficiency – which concerns the cost of a policy in relation to its expected benefits; 3) equity – which concerns the level of fairness in the distribution of costs and benefits in society; 4) ethics – which concerns the impacts on cultural norms; 5) political feasibility – which concerns the level of acceptance of a proposed policy by elected officials; 6) social acceptability – which concerns the level of public acceptance and support of a proposed policy; 7) administrative feasibility – which concerns the ability to implement a proposed policy; and, 8) technical feasibility – which concerns the availability and reliability of the technology needed to implement a proposed policy.

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