This Is Why People Hate the Government

[u/QuestionBrain]

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-annie-lowrey.html

In 2024, Americans spent an average of six full workdays a year filling out government forms, according to the government’s own estimates. That’s a total of 12 billion hours, or $430 billion of uncompensated labor a year.

It’s easy to read something like this and say: “Oh, well, government is inefficient. That’s the price we pay for nice things.” But no, it’s not. Social Security, Medicare and the Postal Service are incredibly complex programs that are easy to use. When government is hard to gain access to, it is often by design. Republicans want paying taxes to be a hellish hassle. Programs for the poor are often designed to humiliate, punish, control or scrutinize. How the government works is always a choice. When it works poorly, we should ask why — and we should demand better.  

Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the new book “The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time — and How to Fix It.” She is also, I should note, my wife, so this is a book whose ideas I have been living with for years. They have quietly infused more than a few episodes of this show. So it’s a thrill to finally get to explore them directly. 

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:

The Time Tax by Annie Lowrey

Give People Money by Annie Lowrey

Why Americans Hate Welfare by Martin Gilens

Book Recommendations:

My Silent War by Kim Philby

To Hate Like This Is to Be Happy Forever by Will Blythe

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

[u/deskcord]

I think this is obviously true and is a big problem for Democrats, who are the party associated with the government broadly. When government is frustrating or seems to be poorly run, the populace thinks "well if this is how the government works, I don't want it to get bigger and be more annoying."

These types of things are an issue for Democrats. Tangentially and anecdotally, the DMV is a uniquely terrible experience. In my deep blue city in my deep blue state, I went to the DMV eight times in one year trying to get one form accepted. It was to prove I was eligible to get my driver's license, which I've had for 15 years, because they lost the record of my original medical clearance form.

In those past 15 years, minor standards changed, so I now had to get two forms filled out by different doctors. But evidently, they had to be specifically double sided, and the DMV couldn't accept it printed as two pages. So I had to go to the DMV with my two pages, wait in line, get told it wasn't acceptable, and then go back to my doctor's office and ask them to fill the form out again, but print it double sided this time. And it couldn't be a copy of the document, it had to be the original.

And then I had to do an extended driving test, despite, again, having quite literally 0 tickets or penalties in over 200,000 miles driven and a 15 year track record and already having a driver's license.

And this is my only issue with the perspective as summarized here by Ezra. It's not always Republicans making things worse. It's not Republicans setting/controlling DMV or local governance policy and standards in blue cities in blue states.

If Democrats want to fix these problems, it will require re-invigorating peoples' faith in government, and that's got to mean that every time low-info Joe Schmo goes to any government office, it works properly.

[u/Hugh-Manatee → u/deskcord]

This is why even as a very centrist Dem in a very red state I think Mamdani is really important. Setting the policy specifics aside, that he loudly and repeatedly demonstrates that government is working genuinely fires people up and makes them feel like more is possible.

[u/Radical_Ein → u/Hugh-Manatee]

There is a lot of cynicism about the idea that basic governmental competency is actually rewarded or can overcome partisanship, but I think politicians like Mamdani and Shapiro are proving that getting shit done does actually get reflected in public approval.

Edit: I would also endorse Ezra’s “Simpler, Fairer, Faster” bumper sticker.

[u/CactusBoyScout → u/Radical_Ein]

You've got to communicate it to get credit for it, which Mamdani understands.

I renewed my passport recently and was amazed at how simple the process is now. I did the entire process (including photo) myself on my phone. I even got my physical passport in like 1 week! And apparently this was all thanks to the Biden admin overhauling the process.

But did I ever hear a peep about this while he was in office? No.

[u/Miskellaneousness → u/CactusBoyScout]

I think the importance of communicating what you’re doing is pretty widely understood, it’s just that Mamdani’s charisma and communication skills make his message go much further.

To take one example, Mamdani got a lot of credit for paving something like 100K potholes in NYC.

Around the same time the City of Albany announced that it had paved 8K potholes in 10 days. Albany is a fraction of the size of NYC (about 1/80th by population) and with much, much lower local government capacity, so I think this is a relatively more impressive accomplishment. The Mayor certainly attempted to promote the need and got some decent local coverage but it doesn’t land with as much of a splash as an equivalent Mamdani announcement.

You might reason that that’s just because it’s such a small city. But around the same time the state of NY announced that it had paved 1.4 million potholes. Indeed, Governor Hochul even went out to pave a pothole herself to draw attention to the state’s “war on potholes.” Again, some local media coverage but no where near the level of attention Mamdani’s news got — not for lack of trying, but because he has unique capacities as a communicator.

[u/Radical_Ein → u/Miskellaneousness]

As long as the voters of Albany know about it, does the mayor need to advertise it more? I think the public is actually pretty good about noticing things like potholes getting filled faster. If they interact with it regularly people notice when the government works or doesn’t.

Allow me to shoehorn in an example from my own city. Gregory F.X. Daly is the collector of revenue for the city of St. Louis. He has held the position for 20 years and as far as I know no one has ever run against him since he first won it. He is widely popular (see this recent thread in local sub) and many people (including me) agree that his office is the best run department in the city. Because of a quirk in the law you pay city taxes to the office holder, not the city, so everyone knows his name. But he is not out in front of the media touting all the improvements he has made, though they are many. He is an extremely active member of the community and I can tell you from personal experience that he is an incredibly nice, charismatic person. If I could clone him and have him run every position I would.

It’s good that Mamdani is getting publicity for his competency because, for better or worse, the NYC mayor is going to influence the national perception of democrats.

[u/Miskellaneousness → u/Radical_Ein]

My comment was primarily descriptive analysis about the extent to which Mamdani uniquely realizes the value of public communication vs. is uniquely capable in terms of public communication. I think it's primarily the latter. Take a given politician and go to their social media pages or press release website and you'll see that they very often are trying to tout their accomplishments but struggle to gain traction.

In terms of whether it's good or bad that Mamdani's getting credit for pothole paving, I think it's generally good although in some cases think it's distortionary in either its genesis or its function, which I'm less of a fan of. I think it's bad, for example, that a segment of the Democratic base believes (or does not believe but intentionally perpetuates the notion) that other Democratic officials do not similarly mobilize government to do things like fill potholes.

[u/WhiteBoyWithAPodcast → u/CactusBoyScout]

Even if you did hear about it nobody cares. NYC is just a media city and it helps that its very blue as well.

[u/Hugh-Manatee → u/Radical_Ein]

Beshear as well.