ABSTRACT
Cost benefit analysis on a substantial scale is undertaken in relation to both minor and major policy decisions. The notable contribution which a group of RAND economists made in the late fifties and early sixties was to suggest that there were techniques that could be used to show which courses of action were cost effective in a wide range of government activities. The task of breaking down resource decisions into sufficiently discrete issues was an important one. It is certainly true that planning is time consuming and expensive. It has political costs too. The technical need to undertake capital planning or manpower planning may come to dominate other attempts by a social service agency to plan ahead but a third important incentive is the political pressure to contain the level of taxation. Politically unacceptable degrees of income inequality that are seen to endanger the long term security of the society present difficulties for free market economists.
