Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.

Burns’s quip plays on a familiar democratic irony: many ordinary people—cab drivers, barbers, and other everyday interlocutors—speak with great certainty about how government should be run, while the actual work of governing is left to politicians and bureaucrats. The joke flatters “common sense” expertise while also gently mocking it, suggesting that confident opinions are plentiful but not necessarily matched by responsibility or practical constraints. Coming from a comedian known for wry, observational humor, the line also hints at public frustration with political leadership and the perennial belief that someone else could do the job better—especially those encountered in casual, talkative settings.