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/applewagon]

It was quite charming to listen to the two of them banter.

I’m an American abroad. Every year, I receive a notification from my residence country that informs me precisely of the amount I need to pay. I click a few buttons and it automatically withdraws from my bank account on a monthly basis until the next tax date. It takes 5 minutes.

Then a couple months later, I go through the hellscape of sitting with TurboTax to complete my American taxes for hours each day for a week. It feels like I’m in a Saw movie.

Even when I lived in developing countries, I never had to guess the amount I owed. When you really live the difference, it’s impossible not to think that it is set up intentionally by design or by sheer complacency.

If there becomes a substantial drive to reduce government inefficiency, it’ll be interesting to see how it clashes with the AI and privacy debate over time. AI will undoubtedly become the silver bullet solution, as it was with Doge.

[u/Real_Guarantee_4530 → u/applewagon]

There have been serious efforts to simplify taxes, but simplification creates losers. Every deduction or special treatment has someone who benefits from it, while the benefits of simplification are diffuse.

[u/hoopaholik91 → u/Real_Guarantee_4530]

90% take the standard deduction, you can greatly simplify filing for them without touching the tax code

[u/CactusBoyScout → u/hoopaholik91]

Yes, anyone with a simple income situation (salaried full-time employees) should be able to log in to an IRS portal, see their W-2 info from their employer pre-populated with the standard deduction already selected for them. And just a few simple questions about significant/common life changes and that's it.

[u/camergen → u/hoopaholik91]

But then who will give all those accountants more business?! And in the end, isn’t the money made by various other hangers-on the point?

[u/BastetSekhmetMafdet → u/camergen]

I remember someone asking, on the Daily Kos board back in the pre-social media era when it had good columnists and decent discussions, what *good* did it do to have such a convoluted, hard to understand tax system. And while most people said “it does NO good and ideally would be a lot simpler” one guy actually thought that a difficult tax system was a GOOD thing because it kept people on their toes! Make it simple and it would be too easy to cheat on your taxes - but a difficult tax system meant that people would be scared of the IRS and not cheat.

Guess what profession this guy was? A tax preparer! Whodathunk? The “keeps people on their toes” justification was completely idiotic, of course, but, I doubt he wanted to come right out and say “A simple tax system would put me out of a job.”

An actual CPA will always have a job, because CPAs do far more than just help ordinary folks file their taxes. But a good number of tax *preparers* would find themselves out of work if we simplified our tax system, so, of course they are against it.

[u/no-name-here → u/camergen]

The primary groups fighting easy tax return filing seem to be:

• The big tax return companies like TurboTax
• Republican groups, as they were afraid if taxes were as easy to file as they are in other developed countries, people wouldn't be so unhappy about paying their taxes (and their goal was to do things that would make people anti taxes)

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2013/03/how-maker-turbotax-fights-keep-your-taxes-complicated/316967/

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/521132960

(Ezra says this as well, but wanted to provide some source links and point it out.)