Surprise, Surprise, Surprise
An Idea for Trump: Make Government Work Again
How many kids aren’t going to start college in a few weeks because the Department of Education cannot sort its Fafsa rollout, four years after Congress did its thing?
Poor kids suffer.
Meanwhile, the Department of Education seemingly has no problem testing the Supreme Court with debt relief program after debt relief program.
Rich graduates benefit.
‘Congress in December 2020 enacted a revised and supposedly simpler Fafsa. While the form is usually available by Oct. 1, the department didn’t launch the new form until late last December. The rollout was then beset by technical and bureaucratic mishaps, resulting in many students not getting financial aid offers until the summer.
‘A new problem cropped up last week when the department informed colleges they would have to submit corrections for student financial aid records individually rather than in bulk as in the past. At least the department acknowledged “the time sensitivity and extra administrative burden for institutions.”’
Dotdash Meredith Grew Its Digital Revenue By 12% In Q2
Regulatory conflict is not discussed often enough. Tip of the hat to @uncharles for the quote.
‘As for Google’s backing off of cookie deprecation and Monday’s court decision against it, Levin says this: “While you won’t find much sympathy in the hallways of our buildings for Google’s regulatory woes, we believe Google got stuck between well-intentioned but conflicting regulators and, without a clean path to compliance, chose the wisest course – leave the future up to users (but reach the same end state).”’
What We Learned About Boeing From the Probe Into Alaska Airlines 737 MAX Blowout
Culture trumps regulation every time. Get the culture right and you’re not going to have problems. Boeing is under intense regulatory scrutiny, not to mention the investor kvetching. Yet, they can’t get the culture right, so they fail.
In the words of Seth Godin, culture is essentially what it means when we say “people like us do things like this.” Boeing’s culture is one of managerialism, lack of accountability, and unrealistic deadlines.
‘A Seattle-area employee on a crew that specializes in removing and reinstalling door plugs described Boeing’s safety culture as “garbage. Nobody’s accountable.” He cited persistent debris and tools strewn about the factory.
‘Workers are pushed to keep production at a steady pace, the employee said. “Here, it’s just push-push-push, push-push-push, push-push-push, you know,” the employee said.’
AI Companies Fight to Stop California Safety Rules
Vague legislation? Check. Regulatory conflict? Check. Recipe for disaster? Check.
‘AI startups and tech giants are rallying to kill a bill ascending through the state legislature that they say would impose impossibly vague constraints in the name of safety. Though some in the industry have called for government regulation, they say it should be done at the federal level with more specificity. ‘
Tax Complexity Now Costs the U.S. Economy Over $546 Billion Annually
In the US, we spend in man-hours the equivalent of the population of the city of Los Angeles doing nothing all year but filling out tax return paperwork.
Now that’s a tax.
‘The federal tax code imposes many costs on the US economy. The most direct costs, of course, are the roughly $4.9 trillion in federal taxes that consume 17 percent of US gross domestic product (GDP). Our tax system is heavily reliant on individual and corporate income taxes, which economists at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have determined are the most harmful for economic growth.
‘A less direct cost is the precious time taken out of our lives to comply with a Byzantine tax code that requires billions of hours completing mountains of IRS paperwork and tax returns. In 2023, Americans filed 271.5 million tax returns. Of these, nearly 71 percent, or 192.3 million, were individual and corporate income tax returns, while another 36.3 million were employment tax returns.
‘According to the latest estimates from the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Americans will spend more than 7.9 billion hours complying with IRS tax filing and reporting requirements in 2024. This is equal to 3.8 million full-time workers doing nothing but tax return paperwork—roughly equal to the population of Los Angeles—and nearly 46 times the workforce at the IRS.’
Nigeria’s Surprisingly Effective Protest Movement
Nigerians exploit social media to organize protests against … bad governance?
‘When Nigerian bloggers and social media users floated the idea of protesting rising living costs under the hashtag #EndBadGovernance a few weeks ago, skeptics quickly dismissed it. Some critics said the campaign would be an opportunistic imitation of the violent antitax protests that young people in Kenya led this summer. It seemed likely that the movement would soon fade. Nigerian social media is a graveyard of hashtags owing to the short life span of political causes.’
Net Neutrality Goes Down in Court
Congress either delegates authority or it doesn’t.
‘“An agency may issue regulations only to the extent that Congress permits it,” the panel writes. “The more an agency asks of a statute, in short, the more it must show in the statute to support its rule.” The FCC pointed to a catch-all in the 1934 law that lets it “prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary in the public interest” to implement Title II.
‘“But such general or ‘ancillary’ authority to fill gaps in Congress’s regulatory scheme does not suffice to show that Congress clearly delegated authority to resolve a major question like this one,” the panel writes. In the Chevron world, judges routinely deferred to administrative agencies when regulators sought to fill in such “gaps.”’