Ahh, what a world we occupy. It’s pretty amazing that, in
this world of advanced science, where we can shoot off rockets to Mars and
outer space, gathering data on far flung planets, our government blabs about
how wonderful is our response to this pandemic, when everyone in the country
understands just the opposite. Instead
of pumping up Trump’s ego 24-7 (he is such a fragile little snowflake) we need
to be devising a plan for coping with the worst economic effects of this
dreadful pandemic.
Right now, our health care professionals are trying to
devise ways to cope with the disease flowing over the country. Can we get
enough medical professionals and health care system technologies to cope with
this fast spreading disease? That is the
main task now. But other folks need to
be working just as hard right now on how to cope with the economic effects, beginning
to be felt throughout the country.
In the old days, just after returning from my earlier career
in aerospace planning and control, and our attempts to transfer some of that
planning technology to India, I entered a realm on large scale program
evaluation, mainly aimed at social and health care systems. Our mantra at that time was:
If you cannot evaluate
the outcomes of these programs, then you also are unlikely to achieve the
desired effects.
One of the most common responses by Congress to perceived health,
economic or structural problems in the country was to throw money at it. That
is, Congress would observe or be told of an upcoming or current problem, they
would argue about it for a while, and then someone would proceed to write up a
package of money they could toss at the problem. They would pass the package,
and then walk away, having “solved” the problem. Then they would go on to the next problem.
Then their “oversight” was a joke, because they never had a clue about how they
would adjudge success in the first place.
So, we consulting research staff at The Urban Institute, devised a new approach to program evaluation back in
those days of the 1970’s. We called it Evaluability Assessment. That is, you
construct a design study to determine whether there exists enough agreement on
how to measure success such that you can actually proceed with the implementation. If you cannot measure success, then you likely
will never achieve success.
So, what does this have to do with anything? Well, I submit
that we need such an approach right here and right now. Various people will be “inventing” or “designing”
new approaches to deal with the COVID 19 disease and its economic effects. We
may already be approaching the 1930s in terms of existing or likely unemployment.
As especially small businesses close,
their staff get laid off. Maybe they can claim unemployment, but maybe not. And
maybe they can still get health care or maybe not. But, even beyond the immediate effects, it
seems likely that many businesses will simply have to shutter permanently, with
even greater staff losses.
I submit that, while health care professionals, e.g., people
like Anthony Fauci, are tasked to design health care programs and systems to
deal with the pandemic, we need intelligent economists (and apparently not all
economists are intelligent) to design a national approach/program to manage the
economic effects on the nation. It is my belief that throwing a single check at
thousands of people, however welcome might be those checks, will not even come
close to solving the economic problems being created right now by this virus. We need a systemic approach that will help
the nation dig its way out of this giant hole this virus is creating. And we need to subject any resulting program
design to the test of Evaluability Assessment. We need real, workable program
designs, rather than the usual Trump flapdoodle PR piece intended mainly to
make him look good, and regardless of its essential utility to our nation’s
good. This approach has been written up
in many forums, and has been applied in health care, in foreign aid, and in
Justice programs. One such description of the approach can be found at:
I realize that, in the era of Trumpaganda, almost anything
emerging out of the White House is likely to be little more than a Trump PR
piece intended to facilitate his re-election (God forbid). But my hope is that
some of the more rational and more intelligent professionals who have been
forced to stand by in dismay, will actually begin to come to grips with this catastrophic
event, and decide to begin designing real, serious approaches to help at least
alleviate the worst of the possible economic outcomes.
Fond hope springs eternal.
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