Welcome to President
Obama’s brave new world.
Federal agencies have
been directed to hire psychologists to experiment and find ways to better
manipulate the American people to the federal government’s will.
“A growing body of
evidence demonstrates that behavioral science insights – research findings from
fields such as behavioral economics and psychology about how people make
decisions and act on them – can be used to design government policies to better
serve the American people,” Obama wrote in an executive order released Tuesday on WhiteHouse.gov. The origin of the order can
be traced back to a 2013 policy proposal entertained by the White House called
“Strengthening Federal Capacity for Behavioral Insights.”
The president’s new
order said streamlined applications for federal financial aid and automatic
retirement payments are two examples where behavioral-science lessons applied
to government programs have been effective.
“To more fully realize
the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost
for the American people, the federal government should design its policies and
programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with,
participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs,” Obama wrote,
the Washington Examiner reported.
Obama has not hidden his
interest in using federal resources to employ behavioral science techniques on
the public. The White House launched a Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, or
SBST, in February 2014 and then celebrated its one-year anniversary on the White House blog.
“SBST had a successful
first year, launching a wide variety of evidence-based pilots with objectives
ranging from connecting veterans with employment and educational counseling
benefits to helping struggling student borrowers understand their loan
repayment options,” the Obama administration wrote Feb. 9, 2015.
SBST will now move
forward to identify programs that will “most effectively promote public
welfare, as appropriate, giving particular consideration to the selection and
setting of default options.” The team’s work is done under the purview of the
National Science and Technology Council.
Two figures whose
research played a key role in bringing the new initiative to fruition were
Harvard Law School professor Cass Sunstein (once deemed Obama’s regulatory
czar), and Richard Thaler, a University of Chicago economist, the Daily Beast
reported Tuesday.
“The two behavioral
scientists argued in their 2008 book ‘Nudge’ that government policies can be
designed in a way that ‘nudges’ citizens toward certain behaviors and choices,”
the Daily Beast reported.
Obama’s executive order
requires SBST to issue guidance to federal agencies on how to implement his
policy directive within the next 45 days.
SBST will also consider
different ways of labeling “benefits, taxes, subsidies, and other incentives”
to “more effectively and efficiently promote” the president’s policy goal.
http://www.wnd.com/2015/09/obama-issues-orwellian-executive-order/
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