Burdens: Postscript

 

Black-figure amphora ca. 510 B.C.E., now in the British Museum: Sisyphus pushes his boulder up a slope using his arms and a knee while Hades, Persephone, and Hermes look on. Via.

After I posted a piece yesterday on the David Brooks column on administrative burdens, Mr. Administrative Burden himself, Don Moynihan, published a commentary on his Substack—on Brooks, not on me, fortunately, and a different kind of piece, but certainly more important than the thing I wrote. And somewhat fairer to Brooks, perhaps, and making the point that I originally got from him and his colleagues in a different tone. Also, on the subject of how Brooks sees DEI as a "dangerous ideology":

Let's just pause for a moment to reflect upon how quickly and easily the far right has succeeded in persuading moderate voices that offices who dedicated to the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are promoting a “dangerous ideology.” It is seemingly so self-evident that no evidence is needed.

Brooks also bemoans administrators and managers “doing things like designing anti-harassment trainings, writing corporate mission statements, collecting data and managing “systems.”” Let's assume that Brooks and many others value harassment trainings at zero. The evidence on the efficacy of such trainings is, at best, mixed. But those other tasks seem important. Having a clear mission, having data that tells you how well you are doing, and functional “systems” (let's say an IT system) matter a lot to organizational success! 

I also really wish I had gotten into one big thing involving the presidential campaign: the question of whether Trump, the traditional Republican hater of red tape and bureaucracy and overregulation, will do anything to reduce administrative burden in a second term, should voters give him one:

if [Trump voters] are angry about bureaucracy, will they be served by Trumpian solutions? Probably not. Such solutions include not just massive politicization that will reduce the quality of public services. Based on Trump’s record, we know that he will directly impose more bureaucracy, by, for example:

• massive politicization will lead to a terrified bureaucracy, unable to make the smallest decisions without the say-so of political appointees. It is a recipe for burdens.
• Deconstructing parts of the government whose job it is to stop citizens from being scammed: this included changing the mission of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or refusing to offer citizens the help they were legally entitled to having been ripped off by private higher education institutions.
• Introducing administrative burdens in the social safety net - Trump signed an executive order calling for adding work requirements to any social program. When this was applied to Medicaid, the results were disastrous, leading to eligible people losing benefits because of the red tape involved in documenting work, and generating no labor market benefits.
• Reducing capacity in government to benefit industry or those who don’t want to pay taxes - for example, Trump and other Republicans have opposed badly needed investments in IRS capacity that have improved customer service and allowed the IRS to pilot a free tax filing system. Trump wants you to pay Turbotax, and spend more time fruitlessly trying to get an IRS employee on the phone.

He'll definitely make it worse.