Social Policy Bonds: the acceptable face of capitalism

Social Policy Bonds have many advantages over conventional policymaking. Mostly, they would be more efficient, as investors would have incentives to achieve society's social and environmental goals quickly and cost-effectively. Clarity and transparency of policy goals are further advantages, arising from the bonds' focus on, and explicit targeting of outcomes rather than the supposed means of achieving them. The question of which goals should be targeted is one that most governments evade or obscure, leaving a vague goal, most commonly 'economic growth', expressed as GDP per capita, to fill the vacuum. For much of history, that goal would have been strongly correlated with the improved well-being of a country's population. Nowadays, though, that correlation appears to be broken, with most of the gains in national wealth and income accruing to a minuscule number of people dubbed 'the elite'. In the US, for instance, the most recent data show that top 1% families captured 52% of total real income growth per family from 2009-2015 (source, pdf). 

Under a Social Policy Bond regime, we could ask whether society sees such inequality as a problem to be targeted directly or, rather, whether our main income goal is the alleviation of poverty. Even if inequality were seen as a problem in itself, it might not be necessary to target it for reduction. This is because Social Policy Bonds would be a means of acquiring wealth with which private gain is strongly correlated with public benefit. Many bondholders would be rich and, if their bonds were redeemed early, they would become richer. But this would be a socially acceptable way of acquiring wealth. Bondholders would become richer only by efficiently and quickly achieving society's targeted social goals. This means of accumulating wealth would allow other, less socially beneficial ways – inheritance, say - to be taxed more heavily. It might even transpire that investors would find achieving society's social goals will be easier than the sort of ethically questionable ways of acquiring wealth that constitute the ever more unacceptable face of capitalism. Social Policy Bonds: a new means of acquiring wealth that actually leads to a more cohesive society? Call them 'the acceptable face of capitalism'.