All systems involve trade-offs, and our model is no different

From For Obamacare, What Counts As Success? by Ross Douthat. A point I try and make all the time, particularly in international comparisons is the importance of context and trade-offs. As a simplistic example, things can look great today if you are funding a generous social welfare system by amassing public debt to be paid in the future. Your trade-off is great appearance today with financial disaster in the future. You have to look at context and trade-offs to begin to get an inkling of what is going on which is always more complicated than any single perspective.

Douthat captures the trade-off issues well.

By this I mean that all systems involve trade-offs, and our model is no different: American-style capitalism promises higher living standards overall in exchange for higher individual risks; faster growth rates in exchange for greater inequality; lower unemployment rates in exchange for fewer workplace protections; more liberty for innovators and entrepreneurs in exchange for somewhat less solidarity-as-redistribution.

If the model begins to break down and you want to change the trade-off decisions, you then enter a slough of unanticipated outcomes. Ratchet up the income tax here in order to improve the safety net there but then see an unexpected decline in labor force participation rate over there causing tax revenue shortfall that can only be made up by cutting programs, etc.