Is there any Government program that has worked in the last 100 years?

[OPM]

Actually there are a lot of problems with your question. First, the answer is overwhelmingly "yes." It is easy to think of quite a few. For example, fire departments in the United States began as for profit organizations. They were paid on a per fire basis. Governments ended this system because two things happened. First fire companies would arrive with weapons to fight off other fire companies since they were competing for funds and whichever company put out the fire got the fee. Second, fire companies were found to have started fires when revenues were down. The first obvious one is government run fire service. Part of the problem with your thinking is it is not empirical.

Public collection of garbage was a major entrepreneurial innovation. The innovation was "universal" collection. For profit companies cannot do this unless the system guarantees them a revenue stream, even from those who wouldn't willingly pay for service. Interestingly, now that the universal part is the norm, returning to private collection is quite common provided of course they can enforce the mandate in the way governments can.

Social security actually has provided a very high rate of return, historically. The demographic time bomb it is under, however, means that for current workers that will not likely be the case. The real problem is an out of control federal budget and not the system itself. Indeed, studies on the Social Security Administration show it is more efficient than its private counter part the insurance industry annuity system. Although the fixed rate traditional contracts are a close second, the variable rate ones are not even in the ball park for efficiency.

The Coast Guard is another example of a very effective and efficient system. The military is not, in general, efficient because "patriotism" allows for the support of very ineffective and very inefficient weapons systems and structures.

Finding very efficient government programs is quite easy. Finding ineffective, inefficient or poorly designed ones is also not that hard. As an example, at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Congress mandated the creation of an office that investigates violations of the equal protection laws. The intent was good, but it can neither be efficient nor effective because no one actually determined the need before they created the job. It turns out that it is both redundant and intensely over staffed. There are quite a few programs that are redundant but exist because of pork, or more commonly good intent combined with pork.

You have also misunderstood the returns on Social Security. On a risk adjusted basis they are probably the highest returning investment in the 20th century, based on research on this topic. But there is another flaw. Imagine a world where there was no debt, only stocks. In such a world the return on investment would be very low. Stocks provided a high historical return because funds to support the market were scarce. If you remove that natural scarcity with artificial support then you drive returns down, but not the risk. You get a low return, but with tons of risk.

Now imagine bond world, a world where there were no stocks. Returns would be very high, considering the current returns on bonds, but bankruptcy would be very common. Lots of people would have total losses.

Social Security is optimal precisely because it is an intergenerational transfer, not an investment scheme. What has made the current system sub-optimal is that the promises made exceed the future capacity to pay. Promises need to be reduced.

Finally, you do not want an efficient military or justice system for that matter. An efficient military would be small and in constant combat, just large enough to perpetually not lose, but not large enough to discourage aggression. An efficient justice system would be concerned with speed and cost over innocence. Madame la Guillotine was very efficient and the damage to the society was immense.

As to others, mass inoculation, mass sanitation, mass food inspection, and the list goes on. As the French about their government health care system and you will hear rave reviews.