Sunday Evening Reads: "Administrative Burdens"

Why We Can't Seem To Make Government Less Complicated

Gosh, even the National Archives is trying to sell you “Red Tape”.

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“Instead of making higher education free, we subsidize it later through repayment plans and attempts at debt cancellation. The complexity is disrespectful.” Ron Lieber for The New York Times

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The more “light” research I do (admittedly at this point, reading through major newspapers, government resources and my fellow Substack writers for topics of interest), the more I realize that Crime and Punishment landed on a good idea at its inception, and continues to explore the tentacles of this idea a year later. My founders story is that I have, unfortunately, experienced what being short of money means to your physical and mental health, particularly in our country. We simply do not have as robust and easily accessible social safety net for our citizens as do most other industrialized, wealthy countries. And this causes all sorts of problems for both the agencies and people administering these programs, and the citizens trying to access them.

I’ve discussed in previous posts the myriad ways in which the poor and those living paycheck to paycheck are quite literally punished for their lack of money: higher interest rates and lower credit scores which fuels usury interest rates and higher debt, the complications, ineptness and sometimes purposeful interpretations of federal and state laws (otherwise known as “red tape”), that make it next to impossible to get the monetary help the laws were intended to provide—think the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) money and the funds to keep renters from eviction during the height of the pandemic, as just two, recent examples.

I am embarrassed to admit that until just a few days ago, I didn’t realize there is a body of scholarly research on the impact of “administrative burdens”, particularly on the specific population administrative programs are trying to help, like the disabled, the poor, the under-employed and unemployed, and even those seeking college loans and other financial aid packages, required these days for most of us to pursue higher education.

Many journalists and academic researchers have taken on this topic and presented their well-researched facts, opinions and advice. The following articles are a few of the most recent and provocative I’ve read.

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— First up for today’s readings is a recent post from a fellow Substack writer and esteemed academic scholar, Don Moynihan, McCourt Chair at the McCourt School of Public Policy, Georgetown University. From firsthand experience, I know that attempting to access and get approval for government resources like food stamps, medicaid, heating and cooling assistance, temporary unemployment benefits and the pandemic benefits mentioned above can be a bureaucratic nightmare. It actually depends on who you are able to contact and speak with in a particular agency or nonprofit, and even then, it is just plain luck if your application is actually processed and approved. This might be referred to in academic research as “friction” between the state and the public, but I cast it in a more dire way: cruel and unusual punishment.

In offering this framework with Pamela Herd and coauthors, we were explicit about normative goals, arguing that people’s actions with government should be simple, accessible, and respectful…In other words, policymakers should ask, and have answers to, questions like: if I add a work requirement, how many eligible program recipients will lose benefits? If I make voting easier, will it lead to significant increase in fraud? How much do documentation requirements or administrative fees discourage those with fewer resources from seeking help? The value of such analysis might seem obvious, but it has not been a feature of either social science or government practice.

Here is a direct link to this post titled: “How to think about social science and governing”. It’s fascinating.

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— This column by The New York Times Ron Lieber, and quoted in the intro to this post, has a perfect overlap from understanding student debt to how difficult our government makes it to access help of any kind. Interestingly, Lieber interviews Dr. Pamela Heard, also a professor at the Georgetown University, McCourt School of Public Policy and who co-authored, along with Don Moynihan, the book: Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means. When you write the book, or in this case, have the opportunity to interview one of the authors, you can sometimes nail the heart of the matter. In this case, it is the word “respect”

With certain social welfare benefits, Professor Herd explained in an interview this week, the original program designers believed that obstacles were appropriate. Anyone desperate enough should find a way to muddle through and prove their poverty, or so the logic went….

Professor Herd surprised me this week when she said the word [respect] in passing. I asked her to elaborate.

“Respect includes everything from respecting people’s time to not treating them as if they are trying to cheat or game a system,” she said. “It’s about treating them as if they are full-fledged citizens and human beings who have basic rights to access services and benefits for which they’re eligible.”

Two points about this absolutely correct assessment of our social services system:

1. Applicants are treated from the outset and all through the process as if they are criminals trying to “game the system”, from the tone of the people you communicate with to the amount of proof you’re required to submit to prove you are poor enough to qualify. And the income caps on each of these programs, although it varies by state, is an embarrassment—you have to earn well below the federal poverty level to qualify;

2. And your time? Waiting on hold to get through to an Agency, or non-profit funneling federal or state money, can total days if not weeks of time—waiting two or three hours or more on hold, only to be forced to hang up and call the next time they might be open is torture. After all, you are freeloading off those willing to work hard (and you, obviously, are not working hard enough), so your time is theirs to waste. Respect for an applicants time is rarely if ever demonstrated because of the theory, articulated by Professor Heard, that remains embedded in our system: “the original program designers believed that obstacles were appropriate. Anyone desperate enough should find a way to muddle through and prove their poverty, or so the logic went….”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/03/your-money/student-loans-personal-finance.html

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And finally for this evening, another article from The Times (my sister says I cite them too frequently), written by Charlotte Cowles, that discusses why we need to talk about the debt we carry, particularly student loan debt, and get past the taboo of talking about our finances. Not talking about money and debt does not make it go away.

She [Ms. Booth] owed more than $130,000 in student loans, and the interest was compounding faster than she could keep up. “I figured if I was stuck, maybe other people were stuck too,” she said. “I wanted to know that I wasn’t alone.”

Before she could change her mind, she wrote down the numbers on a Post-it note: Her student debt was accruing $25.15 a day in interest. So even though she was paying $762.97 a month, a measly $8.47 of it was going toward her six-figure principal balance. Then she steeled herself, took a picture of the note, and put it on Instagram.

I never understood why student loan interest is structured in such a punishing way, or why, for that matter, there is any interest at all.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/12/style/student-loan-debt.html

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A possible, and maybe wacky suggestion for streamlining government agencies and programs might be for government personnel, from the highest levels down, to study Apple’s approach to design, to reduce everything to its essence—Apple’s industrial designers study Picasso’s “The Bull” as the basis for its stripped down design philosophy. From a company which believed an “On-Off” button on an iPod was “an abomination” of clutter, our government could certainly learn something about paring down its statutes, regulations, policies and programs to their essence, a clear show of respect for its citizens.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on these issues. Have you applied for government assistance programs or student loans? What was your experience? Any other thoughts? Let me know in the Comment Section below!

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I ask you to join me on our journey to understand the “why” behind the facts, so together we can help find solutions to our most pressing economic, racial and environmental issues and push to right the wrongs of our system. Each of us can thrive in this country, if we don’t allow ourselves to be beaten down by the very system we’re trying to make good in. One of the best ways to do this is to become an active member of your community and a participating citizen in our larger community.

And speaking of communities, you can also become a participating member of the Crime and Punishment community by signing up right now for a free or paid subscription. Thanks in advance for your support!