Acta Oeconomica 13. (1974)
1974 / 3-4. szám - Lengyel László: Prognosis of Public Social Expenses for 1980
364 L. LENGYEL: PUBLIC SOCIAL EXPENSES FOR 1980 b) Regarding the possibilities for the satisfaction of requirements. The public social expenses — although a fundamental characteristic of theirs is a strong sensitivity to socio-political decisions within a certain freedom of decisions - are strongly determined economically, too, while, at the time of the analysis, on the side of resources and realization in general, the estimates of economic growth relating to the Fifth Five-Year Plan-period and the conceptions referring to the proportions and inner structure of consumption and accumulation were not supported by proper calculations, yet. Because of all this the degree of the increase of central funds could not be determined. c) On the side of methodology. Until now, when planning the public social expenses stress was laid mostly upon annual planning. Thus - both theoretically and practically - we have a fully developed methodological apparatus and data necessary for the medium-term planning of the field at disposal only within relatively narrow bounds (for example, public consumption data at constant prices etc.). However, it was precisely the lack of the above mentioned decisions that allowed us to make a quantified prognosis of the future development of public social expenses.* It must be kept in view that a prognosis is able to give an approximative estimate for the possible alternatives of the macro-economic magnitudes - on the basis of development trends which may be taken from the past, information on the present potentialities, tendencies presumably asserting themselves in the future according to our present knowledge, considering their interrelations and mutual effects as well as by exploring the possible regularities to be stated from them. Some essential circumstances resulting from the natural character of this peculiar method of futurology must not be left out of consideration. Thus — among others - we must know, that a prognosis is a probability statement relating to the future, expressed also quantitatively, having a relatively high degree of confidence or at least striving after this; it is not an expression of reality but of future probability; it is not a decision (or its suggestion) but the establishing of possible ideas and thus it is made fundamentally with an informative (forecast) purpose and the functions of cognition, seeking for targets and preparing decisions are prevalent in it. The method When prognosticating the public social expenses, both the quantitative and the qualitative approximations were utilized from among the well-known methods of prognoses. During the application of the quantitative methods the computations were based upon three kinds of approximation: * The tendencies developed since the making of the prognosis and the decisions taken since then otherwise agree with the conclusions of our prognosis. Acta Oeconomica 13, 1974