Public finance and budgeting principles

Public Goods and Their Impact on Society

Public institutions are set up and entrusted with ensuring that the service which they are charged with is effectively implemented and the citizens live within the acceptable standards. In the context of this paper therefore, three public goods will be of interest; national security/safety, public health and roads and bridges.

National security or safety of the nation is the pivotal public good that each individual in the US needs not only to get but also feel that they get. Each citizen needs to feel safe within the US in order to be able to engage in economically beneficial activities. It is the single service that governments all over the world strive to invest maximum amounts and even create liaisons with other nations to strengthen since it is upon the foundation of the safety of a nation that all other factors like investments, social network, political stability, educational progress rest upon.

Public health on the same note is not only a public service or good but individual right of all the citizens as enshrined in the constitution. It is the responsibility of any government to appropriately budget for the health service of the entire nation on an annual basis. Every single individual has the right to health care and there is need to make it affordable and accessible, fortunately this is the pursuit of the comprehensive health care system recently introduced, widely known as Obama Care. A healthy nation will result into an active and productive nation economically and socially. Nations that host healthy generations have been known to progress much faster than those that are plagued by diseases and health epidemics. Good public health will not only impact positively on the national stability of a country but also internationally position the country at an advantageous position in terms of politics and economy since the GDP is bound to be higher with a greater number of healthy, active and productive citizens.

The other very important public goods group includes the infrastructure and in particular the roads and bridges. Once a nation has attained its internal security and the citizens are healthy, there will be higher local production in the industries and farms. This means different parts of the nation will be having varied goods that will require to be moved to markets located at different regions nationally or even internationally. The road infrastructure within the nation is central to the mobility of the goods and people across the nation. If the road network is bad, then the produced goods will be useless if they are stuck at one corner of the nation and the farm produce will rot away leading to massive losses. The availability of good roads, augmented with good bridges for seamless mobility is paramount to a moving economy hence the government has to budget for these two every single year, the building and maintenance of roads and bridges is central in public financing and budgeting.

The demand and supply of public goods, just like other forms of goods and services is influenced by the external, environmental, economic and political factors. The threats that emanate from other nations and terror groups located externally from the US significantly influence the level of internal security that the government will put into place. The type of health care system that a nation puts into place will be significantly influenced by the economic levels of the nation since each nation can only offer a health care package that their economy can support. On the other hand, the kind of environment will significantly influence the demand for different types of infrastructure. The types and quality of Bridged and roads are widely dictated by the environment within which they are built.