This was a pretty disappointing take in my estimate. It mostly seems to spend its time scapegoating republicans while ignoring the elephant in the room. CA is

This was a pretty disappointing take in my estimate. It mostly seems to spend its time scapegoating republicans while ignoring the elephant in the room. CA is building a 100 billion train from Bakersfield (379,879) to Merced (84,081). SF, specifically, is perhaps the most dysfunctional city in the country... spending outrageous sums of money accomplishing very little, and there are ~no~ only 8% devious republicans in sight! The 2 mile Van Ness ~light rail~ bus line took approximately 2 decades to complete! Some specifics: > Does anyone seriously doubt that a federal UI system would be better run than the state-run versions that collapsed during the pandemic? Yes, I do (seriously doubt that)! The last time the federal government took on something like this, it was a train wreck which relied on the industry taking on tours of duty to fix it. The notion that the Federal Government is more competent than the states is belied by the series of articles being written in the first place! Is it better for the feds to something once than for the states to do it 50 times - that's a different question altogether. > There are simply fewer federal government employees relative to the tasks we ask of them. As a percentage of the population, the federal workforce was 1.13 percent in 1967 but shrank to 0.64 percent by 2018. We see a similar decline with the IRS... We didn't have computers in 1967. Did human productivity not increase more than 2x in the last 51 years? Why do we need more humans? Did complexity in tax code outpace gains in productivity? Has the IRS not modernized (spending money elsewhere)? I feel like this stat is totally irrelevant to any understanding of the problem and moreover, the suggested solution is perfectly in line with the fundamental problem the author is trying to solve (lets throw money at ineffective governance because that's what we do). > If my interpretation is right, the Republicans who are creating administrative dysfunction described above are also contributing to declining state capacity by picking judges inherently suspicious of administrative power. This is not strictly Republicans' doing. We continuously cheered as Trump policies were stricken by the courts. As a society as a whole, we've continually pushed administration into the judicial branch - out of cowardice and opportunity alike.