Simpler

Cass R. Sunstein served from 2009 to 2012 as administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), a small but influential office created in 1980 by the Paperwork Reduction Act. OIRA oversees federal regulation across virtually every domain of domestic policy, from clean air and food safety to financial stability and highway safety, and no significant rule from any Cabinet department can be issued without its approval. In Simpler, Sunstein draws on this experience to argue that government can function far better by eliminating unnecessary complexity and making people's lives easier. His central claim is not that government should be smaller but that government of any size should work more like the best modern technology: complex on the inside, simple and intuitive for users.

Sunstein traces his connection to OIRA back to 1981, when, as a young lawyer at the Department of Justice, he helped establish the office's enduring role and participated in drafting its foundational cost-benefit provision. He introduces what he calls "Regulatory Moneyball," drawing an analogy to the book and film Moneyball, in which Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta transformed the Oakland Athletics by replacing scouts' intuitions with empirical data. Sunstein argues that regulators should similarly ground decisions in evidence about actual effects rather than in interest-group politics or gut feelings.

To explain why simplification and nudges are necessary, Sunstein presents Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman's framework of two cognitive systems. System 1 is fast, automatic, emotional, and intuitive; it drives habits but struggles with complexity. System 2 is deliberative and calculating but slow to engage. Sunstein contends that cost-benefit analysis functions for government officials much like a foreign language functions for ordinary thinkers: It slows System 1, activates System 2, and forces distance from initial reactions.

Drawing on behavioral economics, a field that studies how people actually behave rather than how standard economic theory assumes they behave, Sunstein surveys findings with direct relevance to regulation. People exhibit present bias, caring far more about today than the future. Default rules, which determine what happens when people take no action, have enormous influence: Automatic enrollment in 401(k) retirement plans dramatically increases participation, far more effectively than tax subsidies. Loss aversion, the tendency to weigh losses roughly twice as heavily as equivalent gains, explains why a five-cent tax on grocery bags reduces their use far more than a five-cent bonus for bringing reusable bags. Social influences also shape behavior powerfully: A UK government experiment found that adding the message "9 out of 10 people in Exeter pay their taxes on time" to collection letters produced a 15-percentage-point increase in timely payment.

Sunstein defines nudges as approaches that influence decisions while preserving freedom of choice, such as disclosure requirements, educational campaigns, and automatic enrollment. He notes that the Obama administration's regulations produced net benefits exceeding $91.3 billion in their first three years while issuing fewer total rules than the four preceding administrations over the same period.

A central case study is the replacement of the Department of Agriculture's Food Pyramid with a simple plate icon showing clear portions for fruits, vegetables, grains, and protein, accompanied by actionable tips like "Drink water instead of sugary drinks." Sunstein elevates this into a general principle he calls "Plate, not Pyramid": Effective communication must be specific and actionable rather than abstract and confusing. He applies the principle to a detailed account of fuel economy label reform, explaining the "miles per gallon (MPG) illusion," a nonlinear distortion that causes consumers to misjudge savings from fuel efficiency improvements. Agencies solicited public comments and adopted a label displaying annual costs and five-year savings alongside traditional MPG figures. Other disclosure initiatives included requirements for airlines to reveal hidden fees, clearer credit card terms, and the Affordable Care Act's provisions for health insurance transparency.

Sunstein argues that government should aspire to make beneficial outcomes automatic, so that people who do nothing still end up on the right track. Examples include automatic enrollment in health insurance under the Affordable Care Act and the simplification of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which previously contained over 100 questions and deterred millions of eligible students. The Department of Education removed unnecessary questions and enabled automatic transfer of tax data, allowing many more students to receive aid.

The book also emphasizes making important information visible and salient. Sunstein opens this discussion with the "invisible gorilla" experiment, in which most viewers counting basketball passes fail to notice a gorilla walking through the scene, illustrating how easily people overlook the obvious. He argues that sellers in free markets often exploit this blindness and that regulation should make hidden risks visible, discussing graphic warnings on cigarette packages, energy usage reports comparing households to their neighbors, and public-private partnerships such as First Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" campaign against childhood obesity.

On the question of how to evaluate regulations, Sunstein defends cost-benefit analysis as an indispensable check on both hysteria and neglect. He explains that agencies assign a value of roughly $9 million to a statistical life when evaluating regulations that reduce mortality risks and critiques the precautionary principle—the view that potentially risky activities should not proceed unless proven safe—as incoherent, arguing it "bans what it simultaneously requires" because every action and inaction creates some risks. He acknowledges that some values resist quantification, presenting cases in which the Obama administration weighed nonquantifiable factors: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) elimination of the ban on entry of HIV-positive people into the United States cited humanitarian and anti-stigma benefits; the Department of Transportation's proposed rearview camera requirement noted that over 40 percent of backover victims are children under five; and the Department of Justice's rule reducing prison rape emphasized human dignity.

Sunstein describes President Obama's January 2011 call for a government-wide regulatory lookback, a systematic review of existing rules to determine what could be streamlined or removed. The initiative produced over 580 reform proposals, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) exemption of dairy farmers from oil-spill regulations that had been applied to milk, saving over $700 million, and the Department of Health and Human Services' removal of unnecessary hospital reporting requirements, saving roughly $5 billion over five years. Sunstein calls retrospective analysis the most important innovation in regulatory policy since Reagan first created the OIRA process and advocates for greater use of randomized controlled trials to evaluate regulatory effectiveness.

Sunstein confronts the objection that nudges constitute unacceptable paternalism. He distinguishes between hard paternalism, which imposes material costs on choices such as fines or bans, and soft paternalism, which influences choices without material costs through defaults, warnings, or disclosure. He classifies nudges as soft paternalism and argues they are justified because behavioral economics demonstrates that people's choices do not always promote their welfare. He insists that all nudges should be transparent and subject to public scrutiny, identifying the real danger not as paternalism itself but as impermissible motivations, such as a government defaulting citizens into votes for incumbents.

Sunstein recounts his contentious path to confirmation. After being nominated in early 2009, he faced fierce opposition from progressive groups, who objected to his support for cost-benefit analysis and wariness about excessive regulation, and from conservative groups, who seized on his academic writings about animal rights and gun control. He endured Senate holds by Republican senators and sustained attacks from television commentator Glenn Beck, who repeatedly called him "the most dangerous man in America." He received death threats at his home address. The Senate ultimately confirmed him 57 to 40 in September 2009.

Sunstein concludes with three lessons from government service. First, cost-benefit analysis functions as a foreign language that counteracts both hysteria and neglect. Second, unnecessary complexity persists because expert rule writers find their own rules intuitive, failing to recognize the burden on ordinary people. Third, the dispersed information held by the public is indispensable: Public comments on proposed rules are not merely a democratic formality but a crucial safeguard against error.