Red tape is burdensome to companies, inhibits entrepreneurship, and reduces competitiveness. This book examines country strategies and tools for reducing red tape and the institutional frameworks set up to reduce red tape, and finds what the trends ...

“Watch out, Goliath. Jon Yates has a slingshot and he’s teaching us how to use it.” —Amy Dickinson, New York Times bestselling author and America’s favorite advice columnist “Jon Yates gives consumers a great primer on how to solve their own customer service problems.” —Angie Hicks, Founder of “Angie’s List” Jon Yates, the Chicago Tribune’s popular “Problem Solver,” offers eminently practical, money-saving advice on how to become your own consumer advocate. What’s Your Problem? is a godsend for anyone who has ever had to take on the bureaucracy—from getting through to the cable company to dealing with identity theft to fighting the unfriendly skies. The first book of its kind—a combination of illuminating true stories and essential advice for cutting through the red tape put up by local governments, health insurance companies, and heartless corporations—What’s Your Problem? is an indispensable handbook that can alleviate your frustrations once and for all and help you get the results you need fast!

Death, taxes, and red tape. The inevitable trio no one can escape. That wry sense of reality colors Herbert Kaufman's classic study of red tape, the bureaucratic phenomenon that all of us have encountered in some form—from the confounding tax form filled out annually to the maddeningly time-consuming wait at the driver's license bureau. The complaints about red tape, Kaufman concedes, are legion. It's messy, it takes too long, it lacks local knowledge, it is out of date, it makes insane demands, it increases costs, it slows progress. It is, in short, a burden and many times there is no measurable positive outcome. Kaufman takes us on an unblinking tour of the dismal landscape of red tape. But he also shows us another side of red tape, one we often forget. Red tape is how government protects us from tainted food, shoddy products, and unfair labor practices. It guarantees a social safety net for the elderly, the disabled, children, veterans, and victims of natural disasters. One person's red tape is another person's protection. This reissue is a Brookings Classic, a series of republished books for readers to revisit or discover, notable works by the Brookings Institution Press.