To save the society on edge of slippery slope, those in power are always trying to solve, or at least, alleviate social problems like crimes, depravity, discrimination, lacking of responsibility, laziness and so on. Those existing social problems are the most significant hot irons, which, if not been paid enough notice and treated as soon as possible, will soon grow into lethal cancers of the society.
The society is always on changing, so are the social problems rooted in it. As the society grows into a complex, multiply stratified one with diversified ideas, values, beliefs and sub-cultures, social problems are inevitably growing from the initially simple, polarized ones into more acrimonious and confusing ones which cannot be labeled as right or wrong any more. In such a dilemma, the authority of the society has to allocate more money for those immediate, existing social problems, in that more intellects and labors are needed to develop specified and fair social disciplines, to supervise and guarantee the exacting of these rules, to help people establish healthy personalities and sound minds, to lay an iron-hand on the violation of laws, and to achieve a subtle balance between different groups of the society.
Yet we should never blunder neglecting importance of the long term research, which might not only help future generations, but also help ourselves. Some social problems, especially those of ethics and values, are deep rooted and not so easily be solved in near future. They may take years, decades or even generations to be excavated and eliminated, gradually. Maybe no fast or brilliant outcomes can be seen when investment is made to this kind of social problems, however, if we never make the very first step, these problems will never be solved. Though these problems seem to be inert and have no fatal impacts to the current society, the fail to conduct them or at least keep them under proper control will easily exacerbate them to some latent dangers.
If we look inside both those acute and chronic social problems, we will find, to some extent, the latter are where the former actually arise from. In other word, those immediate, existing social problems are bombs made from the gun-powder store of those chronic problems. The research of the long term problems will largely help people to understand the immediate, existing ones, thus to have a better solutions to them.
Society is a continuously developing one which cannot be broken up in any specific point. It is important to allocate enough money to the immediate social problems, while it is also necessary to pay enough attention to the long-term ones. Only when a good balance is kept well between the two can the society have a stable present and stable future.