How the government wastes our time

This is Fresh Air. I'm Tanya Mosley. Think about how much of your life you spend on hold. Filling out the same information on government forms over and over, maybe waiting at the DMV, the pharmacy, or the polls. Sometimes for hours. Even as technology has made nearly everything else faster.

My guest, journalist Annie Lowry, has a name for what all of this waiting means. She calls it the time tax, the hours we lose to paperwork, phone calls, appointments, and lines trying to obtain benefits we qualify for and exercise rights guaranteed to us. Annie argues in her new book that this isn't simply bureaucratic dysfunction. Sometimes making a system difficult is the point. And the people charged the most are often those with the least amount of time and the fewest resources to spare.

Poor people, the sick, and the disabled. And right now this tax is climbing. New paperwork and work requirements have already cut more than three point Five million Americans from food assistance, and the numbers are still growing. Annie Lowry is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where she covers economic policy.

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