Can You Benchmark Government Value for Money?

Logosofia no Dia a Dia · May 29, 2026 · 29m

We instinctively compare prices for everything — groceries, streaming services, car repairs — but have no framework for "did I get a good deal?" on taxes, the largest recurring expense most of us will ever have. This episode explores nearly a century of attempts to benchmark government value for money: from 1930s cost indexes that couldn't account for quality differences, to 1970s productivity metrics that measured activity instead of outcomes, to modern digital dashboards in Boston and Seoul tracking thousands of operational indicators. The structural problem persists: measuring what's easy…