Here’s more about the new book about the so-called “time tax.”
The Atlantic, Adam Harris, today: How the Government Wastes Our Time, subtitled “What do we lose in the hours spent filling out paperwork?”
Americans are bogged down in paperwork for reasons that are sometimes necessary, sometimes thoughtless—and, at times, nefarious. In her new book, The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time—And How to Fix It, my colleague Annie Lowrey looks at all those hours spent looking for tax documents or trying to certify income for the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or the FAFSA and finds that things don’t have to be this way.
A time tax is an infliction of “paperwork, effort, delay, and aggravation” that Americans suffer to get the rights they are guaranteed. We have the right to vote in a democracy; a time tax creates obstacles to those rights and makes realizing them cumbersome: They show up as extra identification requirements, when voter fraud is incredibly rare—or, in Jim Crow, as literacy tests.
Tax documents, DMV lines, government programs. I don’t know; I’m skeptical. Am I privileged or advantaged somehow? I spend a couple hours each April filling in my section of our tax returns. (My partner then fills his section in.) I don’t need days to find obscure evidence; I just keep track of my stuff. I’ve had to visit the DMV only a couple mornings in the past decade, and that was to re-register an out-of-state car I inherited so I could sell it. Everything else DMV is done online. I’m not the beneficiary of any government programs.
But I’m going to step back and wonder if the broader theme here isn’t the increasing — and unavoidable — complexity of society. Which dovetails with what I’ve suggested as being the limitations of human cognition. How does society get everything done it needs to do without accountability, which comes from citizens supplying evidence of their situations. The dimwit MAGA folks blame the “deep state” and would simply trash it, as Trump is doing to every institution he can’t simply rename after America or himself, without realizing the consequences. Their vision is anarchy, but they don’t realize it.
Will think more on this.
\\\
What is actual education, as opposed to inculcation, for?
OnlySky, Rick Snedeker, today: The enduring value of liberal education, subtitled “Higher education should challenge personal beliefs, not blindly reaffirm them. That’s why conservatives hate and fear it.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and his large family are the hosts of a new reality TV series on YouTube, The Great American Road Trip, in which, among many inauthentic, scripted moments, Duffy authentically dad-’splains to his skeptical teenage daughter Paloma that studying at Harvard would damage the integrity of her young mind.
*Nothing* should damage the integrity of anyone’s mind; people can accept or reject new information without becoming damaged. I think the fear comes family and community who see children being swayed away from their social norms, and perceive this as “damage.” It’s not; it’s growing up.
What he’s saying is that he’s afraid she would learn things at Harvard that would cancel out the conservative, religious values she learned at home growing up. Duffy, a conservative Trump acolyte, is also implying he doesn’t think his daughter may be capable of synthesizing new knowledge intelligently because of Harvard’s supposed skill and intent in brainwashing kids in liberal ideology.
Familiar themes, that will never go away. Expose kids to everything. Let them figure it out.
