As is often the case in our health care system, doctors' incentives do not serve broader social goals.
But in Britain – where only one in three of us live in a marginal seat – such incentives do not exist.
The fact that all are still at large highlights how multimillion-dollar incentives do not always have the desired effect.
Incentives do seem to invigorate performance up to a point; however, when motivation seems particularly intense, some studies show performance to deteriorate.
Although the new baby-boom incentives do not discriminate on the basis of education, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew recently made clear that this remained a priority.
Obama should bring together the country's leading innovators and ask them: "What legislation, what tax incentives, do we need right now to replicate you all a million times over" — and make that his No. 1 priority.
And while the tax incentives might not matter to young artists just starting out, he said, "for people who want to move from underground to above ground, these incentives do make a difference".
Although the new incentives do not provide financing to clean up polluted land, he said, the city is working "very aggressively" to reclaim such sites for housing or commercial use.
Since 1996, when churches were allowed to apply for public money for social work as part of welfare reform, only 3% of congregations have actually done so.The best kind of carrotsDiscovering which incentives do most to encourage work is also tricky.
"I'm eager to hear what he has to say, but tax incentives do nothing for the people we serve, and the government has reduced or eliminated the grants that we need," Cynthia Amador, who runs a small-business center for Hispanic women in Los Angeles, said before Mr. McCain's speech to La Raza on Monday.
Gary Day, executive director for land and planning at McCarthy & Stone, a developer specialising in retirement properties, warned the high profile committee that government incentives do not help to tackle the country's wider housing issues or encourage the development of other types of urgently needed housing.
