The root cause that is also mentioned fleetingly in the article, is the "effectivization" of at least some western societies, in previously "socialist" Sweden were many things like the post and schools have been sold out to the market there's been an immense amount of enshittification in societal functions, some people still say that "private companies are more efficient" but most people over 40 also remember that stuff actually used to work and has only gotten worse over the years (even if many can't peg it on the actual reasons and listen to anti-immigrant rethorics).
But even publicly owned services have been affected (a few years back there was articles about NPM in medicine, yet not much seems to be changing and it's just getting more entrenched).
Politicians might try to rally people over public waste, but in reality "waste" (too many employees, people having free time at work,etc) is a cushion so that when shit does hit the fan the society has extra capacity to handle things.
Doctors, nurses, rail workers, postal workers,etc shouldn't need to be heroes for keeping up with increasing demands of efficiency that eventually causes chaos when taken too far, they should be able to have "boring" jobs where shit doesn't hit the fan unless an airliner crashes or a war happens.