P.Sc.1001 term paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

P.Sc.1001 - Term Paper Example Ensuring the public good is no simple task, but nonetheless with good policy it is very possible to work toward a better future. The public good is essentially defined as the safety, liberty, health, and welfare of the United States. Safety is mentioned because it is in the best interest of Americans to be protected from all dangers. Ensuring the public good would therefore include protection from crime, from disease, from inadvertent accidents, from foreign attacks and invasion, from atmospheric and environmental threats, and any risk to health or life that can be minimized or controlled. Health is a similar issue, and in the case of government responsibility calls for sanitation and prevention of exposure to dangerous materials or illnesses. Thus, this calls for clean air, clean water, and even clean streets. In addition, it calls for regulations of food and other consumable items that may cause illness. Liberty and welfare are both part of a much less physical and concrete realm t han safety and health. These two aspects of the public good are largely philosophical, and largely tied to the founding ideals. Americans are familiar with the phrase â€Å"life, liberty and pursuit of happiness†, as well as the similar â€Å"life, liberty and property.† A combination of these two encompasses the overall idea of liberty and welfare. These two can be separated however when taking a paternal view for one and a maternal view for the other. Liberty is generally paternal, and thus is something that the state protects rather than provides. The American government should pursue the concept of an island of constitutionality, where the law applies to small areas here and there within a sea of liberty. A poor alternative to this is having islands of liberty that are afloat upon a sea of legality, where the government regulates almost everything unless specified. The former approach is in the interest of the public good. Welfare is a maternal concept, and involve s the government providing for its citizens. Basically, this encompasses the essential services that must be paid for with tax dollars, to include roads, postal service, and the other agencies that basically ensure health and safety. Welfare also includes, beyond health and safety, the opportunity to pursue happiness, and thus provides for equal protection under the law, prohibition of slander and libel, prohibition of fraud, regulation of work hours, and other laws that don’t protect health or physical safety but more the emotional and mental wellbeing of citizens while ensuring that all business is conducted fairly and with equal opportunity. Welfare is therefore the assurance of social fluidity and fairness, and elimination of discrimination and exploitation. If American society therefore provides for safety at home and abroad, keeps the environment and the population clean and healthy, ensures liberty is granted and protected, and also regulates society to guarantee a fai r and equal field of play, then the public good has been well served. These issues are those that are most important to Americans and that the government is entrusted with addressing. The first issue on which a recommendation is necessary is on health care. The current state of American health care is well summarized in a report by the American College of Physicians, where the group points out what is lacking and what it