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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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The current top comment on the /r/politics post on this is:

“Trump just vowed to push for term limits for members of Congress and a lifetime ban on lobbying for former lawmakers, both of which were promises from his 2016 race — and both of which his White House never sought to adopt in any of the four years he was president.” - NYT

(Post did not include a link to NYT, but here is the source from an article titled "Trump Announces 2024 Run, Repeating Lies and Exaggerating Record".)

I pretty much agree. I wasn't happy about Trump being elected but at first I was hoping there may be some silver lining in him actually being serious in his claims to care about corruption. But that hopefulness didn't last long. (Also, I'm not entirely sold on term limits; I think looking at other structural reasons for incumbency like first-past-the-post elections making it difficult to run an ideologically similar campaign is probably a better idea.)

Trump just vowed to push for term limits for members of Congress

This can only be practical if combined with term limits for all federal employees of similar timescales. Else what you end up with is a Congress in Eternal September, newbie Senators being lead around by lifetime bureaucrats and Generals (but I repeat myself) who have been in DC for decades and know the scores. Term limits for politicians is a massive power grab for the federal bureaucracy.

Yeah, that and the similar argument for lifetime lobbyists is a common argument against term limits... that seems like a pretty good argument to me.

To be fair, you really could just term limit bureaucrats. I'd love to see a world where national service is a life phase rather than a lifetime.

There are two key problems.

One is that some roles really do require technical skill. What’s the point in hiring a construction worker to the IRS audit department? To military contract awards? Shorter terms limit the opportunity to learn the ropes, even from a blank slatist perspective.

Second is career. Getting someone to drop, say, 6 years on a job which they can never hold again is a hard sell. No guarantee of transferable skills. Probably terrible compensation compared to market rate labor. It’s got all the problems of maternity leave, except for longer.

Maybe mandatory service can assuage 2 at the cost of making 1 worse. I don’t want to see what command-economy contortions would be needed to mitigate 1. Better, I think, to let government careers exist.

Relatively few government roles require non-interopable skills. You mention the IRS, why would we be hiring construction workers when accountants exist? Hell, off the cuff, let's make working a couple years in audits a mandatory part of licensing. Or, make all licensed accountants do a few audits a year as pro Bono work.

Or my preferred solution, privatize tax collection, the IRS is hilariously clunky and bad at its job. Give JPM and BAC and Goldman the opportunity to bid on federal tax collection for each state, the government will raise more money and it'll be so much user friendlier.

Relatively few government roles require non-interopable skills.

There's a considerable amount of domain expertise in government work (like any other field), even between departments. In the absence of long-term federal employees, these functions will be performed by contractors.

Or my preferred solution, privatize tax collection, the IRS is hilariously clunky and bad at its job. Give JPM and BAC and Goldman the opportunity to bid on federal tax collection for each state, the government will raise more money and it'll be so much user friendlier.

The history of tax farming suggests it will be anything but cost effective and user friendly.

There's also the flip incentive problem that term limiting in any serious capacity means that having a stable alternative career path becomes much more valuable leading to the revolving door of politics. It also empowers those who can retain knowledge of the system who are not term limited by being outside the government entirely such as lobbyists and consultants.

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