The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey

THE TIME TAX by Annie Lowrey is subtitled “How the Government Wastes Our Time—and How to Fix It.” I think the colorful cover alone, plus the general annoyance about red tape will prompt readers to pick up this text. However, it has also been the subject of reviews at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly (“Equal parts distressing and galvanizing, it’s a trenchant case for reform”), and, amongst others, Ron Charles (formerly with The Washington Post) in his Substack newsletter. Lowrey (a journalist at The Atlantic) argues persuasively that change is needed and her voice is a call to action: “Americans should be mad about the time tax. They should be angry about how unfair and how unnecessary it is. They should be furious at how it increases inequality, wastes money, diminishes public health, erodes political participation, degrades civic trust, and allows politicians to hide their policy goals behind reams of paperwork, …. We deserve better than the DMV. We deserve the services this country is capable of. We deserve to get our time back.”

Surely, we can all agree, for example, that “Enrollment forms are written in impenetrable High Bureaucratese and are loaded up with fine print.” Plus, we often have to repeat the effort annually (like requesting a mail-in ballot in Texas, even if it is based on age). Lowrey’s statistics are astounding, too; she references a report by The American Action Forum which estimates that filling out various government forms takes about the equivalent of six workdays per person, or roughly 12 billion hours a year. Lowrey also cites how the time tax falls disproportionately on the poor and people of color. Sadly, her examples, such as those across four types of administrative costs go on and on and on:

(1)   Learning or research costs (e.g., or varied impact of the 2022 Supreme Court decision regarding Roe v. Wade)

(2)   Compliance costs (time to actually fill out forms like Louisiana’s application for SNAP which asks about baptismal certificates and income from 24 possible sources)

(3)   Redemption costs (time and effort to exercise a benefit or use a right) and

(4)   Psychological costs – emotional burdens like waiting for your spouse to join you in the USA; these may be particularly high for people who are already ill, disabled, or traumatized and trying to navigate the system.

Read Lowrey’s book to learn more about this topic and about her thoughts on reform. THE TIME TAX is very well-researched. Notes comprise at least twenty-five percent of the text.