Walter Shapiro's main concern in his 1989 article entitled The Gap Between Will and Wallet is the concept of National Service. He explains that, while voluntary national service were widely popular, the support for the idea was greater than the amount of people actually willing to make the commitment to the service. A large majority of those who signed up for service programs, such as in homeless shelters of hospice centers, came from low-income families because they were more willing to except the unfavorable work for a low wage. In an effort to renew the spirit of national service as a means to promote citizenship and civic engagement, the idea for a Citizen Corps was proposed. This program would consist of 1 million high school graduates who would commit to a minimum of 1 year working of the Citizen Corps. They were given two options: work for $100/week in places such as homeless shelters and underprivileged communities, or enter the armed forces for a wage far below that of regular soldiers. This program would be a requirement to be eligible to receive any sort of federal aid for college tuition. As an incentive, those who participated in the program would receive a $10,000 voucher for each year of civilian service, $24,000 after a two-year military commitment. The response to this program varied greatly. There were those who supported the idea as a way to bring back national service and "close the gap" between the willingness and desire to provide service but reluctancy to make the financial or time sacrifice. However, many viewed this as an extreme means of government coercion to perform service, and placed the poor at a disadvantage since they were the population more likely to need the federal aid, and therefore required to participate in the program, in order to attend college.

This idea of national service can be related to our discussions in class about public goods. The benefits of national service are clear: increased civic engagement, support to lower-income and disadvantaged communities, increased citizenship, etc... However, due to difficulty in recruiting participants, the demand for national service exceeded the supply, and the supply of national service at that time was less than the optimal quantity to society. Society could be made better off if more national service was provided. Therefore, the government took action to essentially create public provision of a service currently subject to the private decisions of citizens with regards to participation or abstention front he program. The vouchers can represent a version of a subsidy to those who choose to participate in the program, since the opportunity cost of their 1 year commitment  was either the salary, likely a higher one, they could have made in their next best job alternative, or the value they placed on the higher education they could have pursued instead. The issue, however, is the method of forcing participation in the program. By making it a requirement to receive federal aid for college, those who cannot afford college, and choose to not participate are made worse off, and may likely not be able to attend college. On the other hand, those who could afford the full college tuition were not subjected to the decision between college and the national service program, and may have been less likely to join. This created a notable selection effect for participants. Therefore, Citizen Corps, while attempting to increase the supply of a public good, is not is not a fully pareto-optimal solution.