This Is Why People Hate the Government | The Ezra Klein Show

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. 00:00 Intro 02:14 The Time Tax 03:51 Bureaucracy as Social Control 10:22 Ordeal Mechanism Theory and 1996 Welfare Reform 15:21 The Post Office Model of Public Service Delivery 22:53 The Infamous D.H.S.-1171 Form 50:33 Estonia’s Only-Once Model 54:05 What DOGE Revealed About Bureaucracy 56:02 Federalizing the Safety Net 01:01:55 The Case for Bigger Government 01:04:57 Creating a “Simpler, Fairer, Faster” Government 01:10:47 Book Recommendations Read the full transcript here: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/op... Watch more on ‪@EzraKleinShow‬ Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...