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Amy Julia Becker: 00:05
What does government bureaucracy have to say about who matters in our society? Why does it take so long and feel so impossible to apply for some benefits and supports when other government programs seem to just show up without any effort at all? And what does any of this have to do with living a flourishing life? I’m Amy Julia Becker, and this is Reimagining the Good Life, a podcast about challenging the assumptions about what makes life good, proclaiming the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envisioning a world of belonging where everyone matters. Today I’m talking with journalist Annie Lowrey. She’s a staff writer at The Atlantic and author of The Time Tax. And so we’re talking about what our systems reveal, about whose time, dignity, and lives we value, how we might build a society where getting help doesn’t mean fighting to prove that you deserve it. Here’s my conversation with Annie Lowrey. I am sitting here with Annie Lowrey, and I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for joining us. I am thrilled to be here, AJ.
Annie Lowrey: 01:08
Thank you so much for having me.
Amy Julia Becker: 01:10
Well, I saw your book when it came out right in August, um, so not that long ago. And I’m just gonna read the title. It’s called The Time Tax, How the Government Wastes Our Time and How to Fix It. And I just thought we’d dive right into what is the time tax for people who are like, I don’t know what you mean, and why does it matter enough to write a book and devote a lot of time and energy to uh making sure that we understand this topic?
Annie Lowrey: 01:34
Yeah. So many times when I was working on the book, I was like, I have time taxed myself. I have destroyed my own calendar, my own sanity, you know, my own sense of ever getting anything. I’m just now that the book is out in the process of going and cleaning closets, which is feeling really good, but also a little bit embarrassing. Just like literally put off for years, which I think probably a lot of your viewers, listeners will know what that feels like. Yeah. But yeah, so you know, the time tax in academic literature, these would be called administrative burdens. So what is administrative burden? It is the weight of bureaucracy, the time you have to spend, the money you might have to spend, the emotional, uh, the emotions you might need to feel, the logistics you might need to do to be the end user of a bureaucratic process. So this is true for, you know, government processes. So that time that you’re spending in line at the DMV that counts. And we can also think it’s true in consumer relationships or a relationship with a nonprofit. And so I really think of time taxes as being slightly different because um very often these are purposeful and they are meant to kind of extract a cost from somebody who’s getting a government benefit or even exercising a right, like the right to vote. Um, and because I think that we can add them up, there’s tons of little time taxes, just like you might have tons of little tax liabilities, but then you get this kind of big bill at the end. And it was this thought process of mine where I’m like, the time you spend waiting in line to vote at the DMV, figuring out Medicaid, helping a parent who’s going into long-term care, um uh dealing with an insurer, um, you know, maybe, you know, figuring out your snap benefits or seeing what you can use with WIC, all of those, they seem like individual problems, but to me, I’m like, that’s all one big problem, I think. Even like getting a building permit if you’re trying to like put a patio behind your house.
Amy Julia Becker: 03:26
Yeah. So, and why, like my husband today went to like get um something done on the car and he got there and he waited for an hour, and then they came out and they’re like, Oh, do you have the adapter for the blah, blah, blah? And he’s like, I don’t even know what you’re talking about. And they’re like, Oh, yeah, sorry, we can’t do it. So this has nothing to do with the government. It’s just like the car dealer or what car repair people didn’t tell him what he needed. And so why is what you’re talking about different than that in the sense of like, yeah, it’s just life. Some things like take longer and it’s annoying and it’s like part of being human.
Annie Lowrey: 03:56
Yeah. And I do think that, you know, there are, if you’re enrolling something, they’re in enrolling in something, yeah, there’s gonna be some process of enrollment, right? So is what I’m talking about just kind of fact of life. And here I really like to think in terms of, well, how many things do we have to enroll in? In the United States, we have to enroll in a lot of things. We have to do a lot of work. We do not have the same universal benefits and universal services that a lot of other countries do. So, one example of that is, you know, the government, you might be going to a great public college or a community college, but if you’re taking out a loan instead of getting free tuition, right, there’s a whole process around that. Another example of this that I like to point to, because I think it clicks for people, is that in many of our peer countries, families without complicated tax situations. I’m not talking about like Elon Musk, I’m talking about just your average family. Maybe you have a salary and then some other income from something, it’s pretty straightforward. In most of our other peer countries, you don’t do your own taxes. You might not have to do anything. So if you are a resident of Japan and you’ve, again, pretty simple tax situation, literally nothing. Nothing. You’ll get a document summarizing. You can change things, you can object, you can say, oh, hey, I was actually supposed to do this. The IRS could, again, nine and ten of us are using the standard deduction. We are not like running multiple shell corporations. The IRS could 100% send you a document with all of your tax information already filled out. It’s called a pre-filled form. It’s used in many other countries. You can do your own taxes if you want. You can object. You can say, hey, you got this wrong, whatever else it is. But for a lot of us, man, to even just have the IRS do 90% of the work, which again, they already have the information. That’s what I mean by time tax, right? Yeah. Yeah. We don’t actually have to be doing our own taxes. It’s just the law that says that we have to.
Amy Julia Becker: 05:53
Well, and so that’s where I wrote down when you said like it extracts a cost, and in some, at least to some degree, it extracts a cost that doesn’t have to be paid. Like exactly. And I think that’s kind of what you’re getting at. You gave some like egregious but really significant examples of this in the book. And I just wanted to ask you to like share one. Again, you’ve done this a little bit by giving us the positive example of these countries where you don’t even have to like take the time to figure out your taxes. But I’m thinking about either like the Michigan form or the woman who got bumped off uh, I can’t even remember what benefit, but like dozens of times. But will you just give us at least one of those examples of the time tax in real people’s lives? Absolutely.
Annie Lowrey: 06:34
So I’ll give you a couple of where I see this is excessive at this point, right? Like we don’t, we don’t need this, or just the government is not thinking like a citizen, is not putting itself in the shoes of the people who are accessing these programs. So one of those kind of emotional um, right, like what are you asking when you’re asking this comes from a form um that they had in Michigan. This was the main form for um assistance. So if you needed food assistance, you know, or Medicaid coverage, you would fill out this one form. And the form was 18,000 words long and it consisted of more than 1,000 questions. It was impossible to read, right? It was like, you know, the manual that you get with your washer dryer. Like that was what it was like. And it had all this scary stuff up front about fraud. You are a low-income Michigander, you are at risk, you want food assistance because you got kids and you need to keep them fed. So this form it is 18,000 words. It is a thousand pages or sorry, a thousand questions, like 50 pages, I think was the total. Right. Again, it just looks like a like, you know, it’s it’s just impossibly dense, it’s hard to read. There’s all of this information at the outset about fraud, right? Treating you like you’re a fraud risk. And there’s this question if you are an unmarried parent and you are pregnant, um, the place and the date of conception of your child, this is a horrifying thing for the government to ask. And there’s a reason, which has to do with um child support and paternity determination issues. But not that many people who are applying for food aid are going to end up in that little subset of people where there might be that question. So why is that question on the form that everybody is using that you’re going through? And you might be like, wait, but the place and date of conception? What? And so what message is the state sending to you? Is that is the state standing in your shoes and saying, I’m at risk and I’m doing this thing that might feel a little humiliating for me for asking for help for food stamps for my kids. And instead of showing any, not even compassion, but just neutrality, this is the state I think antagonized it. It’s bullying in some ways. And I don’t think that was intentional, but this is right, like how functionally the state was treating people. So that’s just one example. And then yeah, you know, um, I do think that lower income, sicker, um, less stable for whatever reason Americans interact with the state more often, people with criminal justice involvement in their past, they end up just interacting with tons and tons of these forms. So the woman that you were referencing, mom of three named Marcella, and she lives in Salt Lake City. She’s a manicurist, she’s always been very low income. She’s a great mom and really committed to making her life better for herself and her for her children. And she um was labeled as a fraud risk because she had screwed something up on her taxes a while ago. She’s never been tried or convicted of a crime. She has never had any interactions with the police, right? There was no lawsuit about this. She fixed the tax issues, she still got labeled as a fraud risk. So instead of applying for a benefit every six months or 12 months, she has to apply every month or two. And so she has been kicked off of SNAP or Medicaid and reenrolled in the same program more than 120 times. And I’m like, whose interests are being served here? Right. I don’t know.
Amy Julia Becker: 10:04
Totally. And I think also that she’s like a poster child for what you, you know, she’s working hard, she is stable, she is caring for her family. And if there’s anyone you want, I would think, to support, it would be Marcella, you know, instead of being like, and now spend another however many hours, and just the demoralizing aspect of having to figure out how to, you know, try to get back on that aid. Yeah, it just those again are some of the more egregious examples in the book, but I do think they’re indicative. And I don’t know, I guess I read what you had to say, and I felt like at least some of these programs did have some design elements that were trying to communicate we don’t really want you to get these benefits, or we think that you are not deserving of them. Like I guess what what idea of what it means to be human is being communicated in the way that we are legislating or like making people fill out forms, uh, you know, exerting the time text.
Annie Lowrey: 11:09
Yeah. You know, it’s such a good point. And one thing that I think about a lot is um whether we can have a place of neutrality to the existence of families with low incomes, right? I think oftentimes people on the left, and this is not everybody, but sometimes people on the left, right, they’re like pitying, right? Okay. Oh, it’s sad, right? That’s unfortunate, right? It can be condescending, right? Like I will, I will, you know, from a place of grace deemed to help you, person who needs help. And I think sometimes on the right, it’s well, what’d you do to get poor? Right. Right. Maybe you need to fix it. Maybe you need to get your act together. Maybe the government can help you do that, because we’re not gonna come from this place of neutrality saying if you’re low income, let’s just pull the income up, but from this place of fixing. And it’s true sort of on both sides. And again, I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush here. Um, but I think as a general point, in a lot of government programs, if you’re getting a home mortgage interest deduction, there isn’t like an emotional weight to that from the state vis-a-vis you. You just have a mortgage and qualify for the deduction. There’s perfect neutrality, like there’s no emotional content. But I often think that for some programs, for immigrants, for low-income individuals, uh, for people with criminal justice involvement, for people with disabilities who aren’t able to work, there is this moralism, and it kind of can sometimes come from both sides. And I know we don’t want to always both sides. And again, I want to really note that this is not the attitude that other people have. But I do like this, you know, I wish that perhaps one of the ways of thinking about this is like, do we have actually too much emotional content from the state vis-a-vis us?
Amy Julia Becker: 12:54
Hmm. Well, and I think about I remember when I first learned that, um, and I might I might get these numbers wrong, you might be able to correct me, but that like Section 8 housing um costs less than the home mortgage deduction. Yes. And so smaller budget by half. Okay, so there you go. You know this better than I do. And I just remember being like, okay, but when you are a homeowner in America who is getting that deduction, the deduction feels like it’s like a source of pride. Like it’s like, go, you, you bought a house. Yes. But you’re not thinking about it as like the government is effectively giving me money to have my house. Yes. Just as the government is giving that person money to have their house. Like you don’t think about those as kind of neutral or equal, you know, benefits that we get from living in a country that says, yeah, we want people to have houses. Like we want you to be able to live. And um and that was really helpful for me in terms of being like, whoa, I’m seeing this as kind of something to be like feel like I’m morally upright and I might see someone else as like, oh, they can’t get their act together, so they’re living in Section 8 housing, as opposed to like, yeah, everybody should be able to live in a house. And we are, we as a country are supporting that in a multitude of ways, whether you’re actually in like an upper income or a lower income bracket. I I don’t know. I do, I agree with you just that that we don’t have a sense of neutrality. There’s a lot of like value, moral value being um laden on these programs without us necessarily even knowing it.
Annie Lowrey: 14:23
Absolutely. And so if you, you know, if we were talking to an economist, if we had a third person here, an economist, I don’t know if you’re an economist, AJ. I don’t know. I am not an economist. Great, neither am I. But so um, you know, uh an economist would tell you that a tax credit and a grant or a direct payment, those are budgetarily the same thing. Right? This is very, very obvious to economists that what they call tax expenditures, they describe them as spending through the tax codes. That’s your home mortgage interest deduction, that’s your 529 savings plan for your kid, that’s a million other little things, right? Um benefit programs for marginalized groups, they are benefits. You have to apply, they are issued. There’s very often, you know, you might not get it. Section eight, not nearly like I think, oh my gosh, I’m gonna forget. But I think it’s like less than one in five families that qualify on income terms and need it actually gets it because it’s too small and rent has gone up so much. Right. But when you talk to people about tax credits, they don’t see them the same line, right? Yeah. They’re like, well, that’s the government letting me keep my own money. In some cases, that’s an argument. And it’s like, sure, but that’s also the government like sending money to you. They’re just sending it through the tax program. Yeah. Um, and so I think that the government, in some cases, policy, they know this. When they want to hide things, they make them these tax credits. So, you know, there’s really three pillars of anti-poverty support or anti-poverty programs in the United States. There’s many of these, right? But like when we’re thinking about um non-seniors, non-kids, we’re looking at Medicaid, we’re looking at SNAP, and we’re looking at the earned income tax credit, which boosts the incomes of people with low incomes through the tax code. So the credit gets bigger the more you earn. It’s a big incentive. You know, when you’re talking to people about anti-poverty programs, so often you’re talking about like welfare or SNAP or some of these other things. Like, who’s bringing up the EITC? Because you might not even notice that you’re getting it. You’re just like, oh, I got a tax refund. And yeah, it’s just a very interesting thing that I do think that these programs, they’re hidden for the higher income taxpayers and they are very obvious for the people who are lower income. And yes, I think you’re completely right that different programs come with these different uh senses of neutrality or bias or emotional freight or however we want to describe it.
Amy Julia Becker: 16:55
Yeah, and I’ve been thinking about this. Um, you know this, and my listeners know this too, that I have a daughter with Down syndrome. And so I am like highly educated, relatively affluent American, and as a result of that, have often not paid, you know, personal attention and haven’t had to endure experiences of the time tax. And yet, for two decades now, I have had a child with a disability, and especially now that she turned 18, and so there are like multiple different systems that we are trying to navigate, and I’m like afraid I’m gonna get it wrong all the time, um, especially when it comes to Social Security and benefits and what is she eligible for? And do we need to be signing up because it’s gonna for something that we don’t even need right now, but it’s probably gonna be a wait list of like 12 years. So what if we do need it at some point in the future? You know, it just we have had to experience a time tax. We’ve also had to experience not just the, I mean, there is the time, there’s also the emotional weight of I don’t know if we’re gonna receive this. I don’t know if I’m doing it right. Like, and I don’t, and I kind of feel like uh with children with disabilities and young and adults with disabilities, you as you may know, you can’t have more than $2,000 in your name unless you have an ABLE account, which is kind of this whole other different d mechanism. And I’m so scared that like I’m just gonna mess up because I’m her like representative payee and have her account go above $2,000, and I’m gonna mess things up for her. And it’s just this interesting uh experience that I don’t have in any other realm. And yet I know that our socioeconomic status, racial, uh you do a great job of kind of bringing in the racial history of our nation and explaining the ways in which these laws and systems have been built to tell people with disabilities or who are in other marginalized groups, um, yeah, that you you are not as valuable or something as the, you know, what we might call mainstream or typical American. I don’t even know if that’s the right way to um characterize the rest of it, you know? Um and so I guess what I’m wondering is could you explain that even a little bit more, maybe even bringing in the um issue of race, because we haven’t talked about that yet, in terms of how uh things are structured so that a family like mine, unless we have a child with a disability, might not know what you’re talking about. And then other families would be like, I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Annie Lowrey: 19:20
Yeah, absolutely. I’m really interested as a writer, as a journalist, as an American, as a human being, in these experiences where people get treated differently by the state than they expect to be treated. And I’ve talked to a lot of families who have health complications or have some other reason that they’ve kind of taken a ride down the income ladder. And they’re often like, wait, I’m being treated like I’m poor, like I’m suspect. I’m being treated in this way that I’m not used to being treated because I’m one of those Americans, like I’m working, I’m getting Social Security, I show up to vote, I show up at my community meeting. What do you mean I have to pee in a cup? What do you mean that I have to go in front of a judge? What do you mean that I have to hire a lawyer to handle this whole thing? And the truth is that I don’t actually think that that attitude is is bad, right? I I stand in no judgment of it. But it’s interesting because sometimes I think that people ex who expect to be treated in a different way in the state, it’s not that they don’t like it any less, but they they do have this attitude of like, well, yeah, okay, that is how the state treats people like me, people in my community. And these expectations are very different. And I think it explains a little bit why some marginalized Americans, whether that’s on income terms, racial terms, right, they withdraw from government. They vote less, right? Like they don’t want to interact with this institution that can often seem like a threat to them or like a force that they pay for that doesn’t care about them, right? Because even very low-income people, they pay taxes too. And so, yeah, in terms of the racial history here, I think if we’re going back to like, why doesn’t asking the broad question, why doesn’t the United States have the universal systems of health coverage, retirement benefits, other programs that other countries do? And there’s a lot of answers to that question. But one I think is that at the time that we were setting a lot of our big programs up, which really starts um, you know, the the big first wave of all of this happens uh in 1935 during the Great Depression. This is the New Deal, right? So the New Deal gives us unemployment insurance, it gives us social security, it gives us actually cash welfare. That comes from the New Deal. That’s that New Deal program. Um that was Jim Crow. That was Jim Crow America. That was when we have this southern block of Democratic senators that are absolutely committed to uh the oppression of black voters and the supremacy and white supremacy in the South. And this later becomes hugely, right? Like this is difficult for the Democrats who are passing the New Deal, right? Because at this time, these these segregationist Democrats are critical to the votes of Northern Democrats passing, even if they have this disagreement about it. But it means That we don’t have universal programs because at the time, the people who were voting, the people who were in Congress, they didn’t want them. And so we’re still living with that legacy today. It’s kind of interesting to me always that health insurance, like why do why do we have the health insurance morass that we do have? That’s actually a little bit more of an accident in some ways. It’s like, you know, the kind of like butterfly wing that flaps, and then all of a sudden, you know. And what happens there is that basically uh during World War II, when we’re fighting World War II, um, there’s a wage and compensation freeze, right? Because the entire government is kind of oriented towards supporting the war effort, defeating the Nazis. We’re sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to go fight. And so as part of that, there is a wage freeze. And there is this determination that health benefits are not subject to the wage freeze. So companies to compete for workers, they start offering these benefit packages, they start offering health insurance. And then we get the employer-sponsored health system that just never, even at the time, people are like, this is probably not smart. And we’ve just never been able to do anything now, right? Like to undo it. Wow. Yeah, exactly. We now have this very complicated employer-sponsored system. That’s interesting. Anyway, but I I do think that um, you know, we have come such a far way in terms of our understanding of racial differences. We’ve come, right? Americans do not hold the racist attitudes that they held 40 years ago. They really do not. And their understanding of personal misfortune has changed dramatically in Poland, right? There’s this been this dramatic swing, mostly among Democrats, but also among Republicans and and you know, kind of halfway in between among moderates of like, okay, if a person is experiencing difficult thing X, what is to blame? Americans used to, you know, be much more likely to say, well, it’s their own fault. Now they’re much more likely to look at structural factors. And um so the country has changed, but we still have these legacy systems, these non-universal systems, and it’s just really hard for us to make updates to them.
Amy Julia Becker: 24:07
I want to talk about universal systems in a minute, but I also want to just like uh underscore a little bit of what you just said, which is I’ve been thinking about like, you know, this is a podcast called Reimagining the Good Life and this idea of the good life. And I often am actually talking about like your material circumstances are not what makes a good life. Like you have the good life because of your values, you have them because of maybe like spiritual commitments, you have it um because of your limits instead of your, you know, uh amazing, you know, possibilities or achievements or whatever. And yet, it’s also a degree to which if you are living in poverty and are kind of scrambling and like all the time, that really can erode an understanding of, and not an understanding of the reality of a possibility of living like the good life. Um, and I was just struck by the fact that uh this is you wrote this, the safety net exists to help people achieve financial stability for themselves and their children, not to become billionaires, just to like have some like stability in their lives that allow for other things to happen, such as um pursuing a life of flourishing. So again, this is you study asked for study has shown that it can. Kids whose parents received housing aid when they were little were less likely to be incarcerated as adults. And you go on to talk about like when you have stable housing, when you have stable income, when you have food, it’s pretty basic needs met, then a lot of other things not only happen in the individual, but actually for generations. There’s was one statistic you cited about when grandmothers have this, like you see the ripple effect within the generations. And so I just feel like it’s important to underscore this is not um something that is actually fleeting, even in its effect. If we give financial um support and stability to families and to individuals, it makes a long-term difference. Um and universal programs are one way to do that. Will you just give an example of like a universal program that actually works? Um, again, just so because I don’t think most people are thinking about or even necessarily know the difference between a universal program that just goes out without you having to ask for it, and these both disparate programs and also programs where you have to like apply and prove your worth for it.
Annie Lowrey: 26:23
Yeah. So we have some great examples of universal services. My favorite is always public schools. So you have a kid, that kid can go to public school. I know that there’s some questions about distances. There’s some definitely not all public schools are great. They don’t meet the needs of all students. But this includes if you have a kid who has medical fragility disabilities, right, needs to be on an IEP, that public school is going to meet that need legally. They have to. And again, I’m not saying that they’re gonna do so perfectly and that all students’ needs are met. I’m not saying that whatsoever. But you are guaranteed that education starting at the age of five. And that’s true for all families. And it is not obligatory. You don’t uh have to use it, right? You can homeschool, you can private school, whatever it is that you want, but it’s there for you. Um, in terms of United Sally, the other service that I love just thinking about, right, is the postal service. It costs the same amount to send a letter everywhere in the United States. I think this is kind of beautiful when you think about it. No, it’s incredible. Yeah. Yeah, you can be in Alaska and be like, I want this to go to Puerto Rico, and the Postal Service will take it. And you don’t have to register with the Postal Service if you have some like legal issue or something else, or you haven’t paid your taxes, or you’re driving on a suspended license, Postal Service doesn’t care. You’re still gonna get your mail, right? Like that’s it. Their job is to deliver the mail, and that’s what they’re gonna do. And they have this tremendous service orientation. And again, I’m not saying the postal service is perfect at all. And in terms of universal, we don’t really have universal programs exactly, but the closest thing that we have is is Social Security’s retirement program and and Medicare, right? Medicare, for the most part, you turn 65, you’re insured. That’s it. And there’s Medicare Advantage, there’s like lots of things in there. But um, and and we’re talking about the old age Medicare program. Obviously, Medicare does a lot of things. Uh, as I know that you and probably a lot of your disciples know, yeah, it’s there. That’s it. You’re 65. As long as you are meeting the citizenship requirements, there’s some very, very basic other things. Social Security, uh, I think it’s like 95% of Americans are covered, not everybody. But for the most part, all you got to do is tell Social Security when you want to retire. And that’s it. And they again have this tremendous service orientation. So the example that I give, and again, not perfect program, nothing, is the example that I give in the book is that after um the terrorist attacks on 9-11, Social Security goes to the survivor centers where families are, and they have civil servants say, Hey, you you might be able to get Social Security survivor benefits. Can we help them do that? They suspend their own rules so that normally you would need a death certificate, and they instead say, Can you show us a pass and do you have a ticket or a passenger manifest? Can we check the name against it? Um, do we know that your husband or wife or dad was working in this building? Can we check an employment record instead? And the first checks from Social Security to the survivors of the 9-11 terrorist attacks go out on October 7th, which is just shocking to me. Incredible. Right. Yeah, amazing for how fast it is. Yeah. Right. And so, you know, I just think that we do have these great and good programs that people really like and and really work well. And I I do think that programs that are bigger, more universal, tend to get more support than ones that are, you know, finicky and small. And um, so those are those are uh just some some examples that I like to give. But yeah, you know, what is our social contract around this? Yes. I think that we can say in the richest society that the planet has ever known, I don’t want kids to be hungry. I don’t want kids to be in poverty. That’s me. I don’t know if that’s everybody, but I’m like, the child poverty rate should be zero. And I I don’t care if that means that you’re gonna give some money to some parents who’ve made some bad choices. Because I’m a parent and I’ve made bad choices too. And I never would want to punish a kid because they don’t get to pick who their parents are. They have no say in the situation. Yeah. And I think that, yeah, we as a society, we’re a bit like, do we want everybody to be insured? I want everybody to be insured. Do we want anybody to be hungry? I don’t want anybody to be hungry. Um, housing, it’s a it’s a bit of a harder one, right? We can say, okay, no, no homeless vets. I think that is a great standard. I think that if you have signed up to fight for this country and sacrificed in that way, I don’t want you to be homeless, but I also don’t want anybody to be homeless. But I do think that, yes, we want to think about like what is that floor of security that we want for people. And then after that, yeah, I’m a little bit like, yeah, then let the government get out of everybody’s lives. And the whole book is about getting the government out of everybody’s hair.
Amy Julia Becker: 30:56
Yeah. Well, and that’s where I think, again, that whole idea of like the imagination comes in because we have like the DMV is a good example of just there’s there is a degree to which we as Americans are like, eh, the DMV stuck in the 80s, not gonna do anything good for you. You’re gonna wait forever. You know, and then you go and you have an and I actually I live in Connecticut, I’ve had a number of good experiences at the DMV, and I’m like, yeah, it just happened. And it’s like, oh, this can actually function well. Like that’s possible. Like I remember being like, I don’t know if like the manager did a good job or if the connected the state of Connecticut decided we’re gonna reform things. I don’t know, but something happened, and I think that’s part of what’s important about this book is this sense of like it actually doesn’t have to be this way. And some of that has to do with like structures that we can change, but some of it also has to do with the way we think about whether it’s a social contract or who is valuable and like how we think of ourselves as humans. Like you only you only deserve to not be hungry if you’ve worked really hard, or you only um only we only want economically productive members of our society. And so if you’re disabled, sorry. I mean, that the some of those things, I mean, again, being kind of in the disability community, yes, I see those messages. I um wrote a piece, a Substack piece a couple uh weeks ago, months ago. Um anyway, just about the amount, like the way in which I have felt guilty as a parent for the resources devoted to my child’s education. Where I when we have an IEP, I sit down and I’m like, oh my gosh, there are like five teachers in this room, which is to say that like all of them are getting paid in order to be just paying attention to my child and her needs. And it’s like once a year for the whole year, but I still, and the number of people who are like, oh my gosh, I feel so guilty about that too. And I was like, let’s not, let’s instead be like, this is awesome, that we have a school system that says, yeah, when we need to wrap around a kid in order to set up a plan that is going to serve them and quite frankly, their community well for the upcoming year, that’s what we’re gonna do. And I instead of seeing that as a like, I’m a taker, seeing like we have a system that wants to give what kids need. And that’s what we’re gonna do. And we can do it.
Annie Lowrey: 33:05
Right. And I think that I think it’s such a good um yeah, because I hear you about that guilt. And then you think about this, right? Isn’t it good for our kids to be in community, which necessarily means being in community with people who are different, who have different needs, different things. Totally. Aren’t we saying not like, okay, let’s educate the kids who are easy to educate, quote unquote easy, right? Efficient to educate. Educate all kids. Educate all kids, right? Meet this is public school, meet the needs of the kids, you know? The notion, and I often think about this, right, when I feel guilt too. What would I tell somebody who’s a friend, right? If if they had that thing that they right so often I’m like, well, don’t feel guilty about that. And I do think that I actually just to broaden it even, a lot of people feel really ashamed and really guilty from, right? Like, I’m a taker, not a maker. And it’s something that I think about all the time, just in terms, right? I sincerely hope that all of us, you, me, everybody who might be watching or listening to this, right? Like, I hope all of us um become disabled, right? Like I hope that all of us have the the luck to live with good fortune. Totally. And um this is, you know, I wrote about it in the book. I have a rare degenerative disease. It’s been so hard for me to ask for workplace accommodations that are really pretty, pretty, pretty, they aren’t, they aren’t hard for the company to meet, is what I would say. But it’s still it’s so upsetting to just be like that acknowledgement. Um, and it’s something that I really want to work on with myself of like this neutrality of like, oh, I have this need and the company wants to meet it, and they’re legally obligated to. And, you know, yeah, great, okay, neutrality, but that’s hard for me too.
Amy Julia Becker: 34:46
Yeah, right. Because I think there is this um image and kind of value that we place upon um not having needs as uh, or it’s certainly because we all do have needs, but not having to admit those needs um is, and that is something that certainly being, again, just identifying with, not as, but um, you know, being adjacent to the disability community has really taught me that not just my daughter has needs, but like so do I as a human. Like that’s really, really and again, we live in the richest society on earth. We can actually meet those needs. Like, um, it doesn’t, you know, it’s a problem that we have. Right.
Annie Lowrey: 35:23
Like, you know, it is it is not. It is not at all. It is not at all. And I I do. And it’s um, you know, it is um, it is, I think seeing caretakers also as performing socially valuable work. Yes, yes. Not just personally valuable and tremendously personally valuable or you know, person to person valuable, but socially valuable work um that might not be showing up on a spreadsheet and might not be calculated in GDP, right? Like I think about that too, right? Like um, if we’re thinking about communitarian systems of support, which I know is probably sounding very squishy, but um, you know, uh yeah, we want government to be reflecting that in some sense, right? Again, I don’t think we want the government to be overly present in people’s lives, but I think that um in in that way. But I do think, right, like yes, acknowledging that that is socially useful, acknowledging that I I again hope that all of us develop profound medical complexities and disabilities, right? You know, it’s it’s um it’s a funny way to think about it, but I think it’s a good way to think about it, right? All of us are going to get sick, uh, or I hope that so many of us are gonna get old, get sick, and die. And uh realizing that many of us are are gonna get sick long before that or have medical needs or have disability needs.
Amy Julia Becker: 36:46
Yeah. Well, so uh you would just in terms of mentioning communitarianism, but also some of the other things you said, I’m thinking, you know, we’re kind of in a midterm election season. People are thinking about who they’re voting for, um the ways in which some of the things we’re talking about might even affect that. And I’m curious how you see the time tax when it comes to partisan issues. So yeah, I know you’ve have written about and even spoken today about how both Democrats and Republicans have contributed to this, but I’m curious like, is anyone doing anything to make it better? Like how how are different sides of the aisle, so to speak, contributing in different ways? Like, can you just speak to that a little bit?
Annie Lowrey: 37:24
Yeah, absolutely. So look, I think that this is, and I don’t want to say this is all Republicans, because I’ve talked to so many Republicans, especially Republicans working at the state and local level that are in, they do not like HR one. They did not want it to happen. I was in fact talking to the head of a sheriff’s association. So those are pretty right-wing folks. And they’re like, we don’t want the Medicaid changes that they’re talking about, because we think that people who have a substance use issue, like, we don’t want to be the state presence in their life. We want them to get treated. Like, that’s a hard thing. Anyway, this is always saying for the folks, folks who might not know, HR1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, was a very large tax cut. The engine of financing for that tax cut was a very large cut to SNAP and Medicaid that was dressed up as not a cut. There’s an expansion of the work requirements in SNAP. So for instance, people between the ages of 55 and 64 will have to comply with the work requirement. So you might be 63 years old and not in great health and having trouble feeding yourself and pretty low income, and you’re gonna have to comply with the work requirement now. Um, and then there is now a work requirement for the first time across the country in the Medicaid program. So Medicaid covers 75 million Americans. And um notably SNAP benefits, right? It’s kind of cash like, it’s not exactly cash, but you use it. The whole point is you use it and you go to the store and you got your groceries, right? Yeah, yeah. And so there’s this idea that, you know, if you’re getting cash, that can be a work disincentive because if you have that part of your budget covered, then maybe you’ll work less, you won’t work at all, right? This is not true for Medicaid. You can’t trade Medicaid for anything, right? You can’t like live on Medicaid, but none of us could. All it does is give you health insurance, which you can trade for medical care. And so there are exemptions to the Medicaid work requirements for parents of young children, for instance. But um adults are gonna have to comply with this. And I’m pretty sure, I don’t know if it’s in the federal rule or if it’s just in state rules, that if you’re already complying with the SNAP work requirement, that should count, right? But um, among the populations of people that will not be exempted from the Medicaid work requirement, um former foster kids, um, people who are homeless. And there’s going to be a set of medical conditions that will exempt you from having to comply with the work requirement. Um but as we know really well, um people can be really sick and not diagnosed. People can be really sick and have not found the doctor that’s gonna tell them why they’re really sick. Right. Um, this is a very personal issue for me. I um was a uh I developed type one diabetes as an adult. And I spent years, right, just getting the flu a lot, feeling really tired towards the end. I was like, oh, my vision is going because I’m getting older. Um, you know, I’m losing weight. I guess I’m getting up to P, right? You know, I don’t feel good, I don’t feel good, I don’t feel good. This was for years, months. And then as soon as I got insulin, when they were like, oh yeah, your pancreas stopped working, that’s why you don’t feel good. It was like my husband was always like, it was like a dimmer switch went on. It was almost within 24 hours, it was like, you just it’s all I needed.
Amy Julia Becker: 40:53
Yeah. Yeah.
Annie Lowrey: 40:53
And there were years, right? Like I wasn’t really functioning as a person. And I think there’s so many Americans like that, right? Who um, you know, if your medical condition, you’re dis if you can’t prove that you’re disabled, which a lot of people with disabilities, right, to have to prove that, that’s really hard. There’s a lot of stigma about like, okay, well, you know, well, you’re able to walk, right? You know, these kinds of things. I saw you, I saw you going to the gym. Yes. And um, and the same thing for medical conditions, right? Like, what if, what if we don’t know, what if you’re not there? What if you need to see doctors to get them to be able to tell you what’s happening with you? And it’s like, for what? Right? Like, it’s just this cut. And I don’t, you know, I think a lot about honesty and dishonesty. I think it would be one thing to cut snap.
Amy Julia Becker: 41:39
I was gonna ask you about fraud, because that is one of the things that comes up, and again, in the disability world, it comes up and yeah. So will you just like keep saying what you were saying, but just dishonesty, fraud. What role does that play in?
Annie Lowrey: 41:51
And so, you know, it’s funny, the thing I was thinking about was actually political dishonesty. I think if you want to cut snap and Medicaid, maybe you should just come out and say that you’re doing it. Maybe you should say, yeah, sorry, Americans making between 125 and 138% of the federal poverty line, those adults they don’t qualify for Medicaid anymore. I’m not saying that I think that’s a good policy, but at least it’s straightforward and at least you’re saying what you’re doing. But by attaching a work requirement to this program, which we’ve had some pilots, some states have had work requirements in Medicaid, and they don’t increase the employment rate. We know it doesn’t work, right? This is a dishonest way of cutting. I don’t like this. And you’re creating a lot of work for people. And it’s like, again, like for what? Right? You’re literally taking the money and you’re giving it to rich people mostly. So, like, I don’t, you know, if you want to have a smaller Medicaid program, fine. In terms of the honesty of people, right? But I think this is so hard. Um as far as we can tell, there is definitely fraud. There are people who defraud the government on an individual basis, who f exaggerate their disabilities, who fake having medical conditions, who lie about their income to get benefits. Yep, this is true. The amount of fraud you can do at an individual level, and I’m not like pro-fraud at all, but the amount that you can do at an individual level is limited to the amount that you can get. So um, you know, you might lie about your income on a SNAP application. I don’t know, you get 50 bucks extra a month, right? Right, right. I don’t we don’t actually know. And a lot of right, like fraud has to do with an intentionality. Fraud gets balled in with improper payments a lot, which generally kind of have to do with people to screw the paperwork up. They’re not trying, it’s complicated, you know? And yeah, I it is hard to argue that we are I don’t want to make a pro fraud argument. I don’t think fraud is good. I think we should absolutely have audits and checks. I’m not saying that we should just, you know, take everybody’s word for everything. But I I think it’s really hard for us to say that we’ve become too obsessed with it. And that we are inconveniencing everybody to catch a relatively small number of people. And that’s kind of how I feel about it. And I think disability is especially tough because you’re trying to capture something often, not always, but often you’re trying to capture something about people’s subjective experience. And right, you’re like your capacity, right? We have these ratings. It’s really hard. And we just have this because it is what makes it so important when I’m just talking about DI here, because obviously there’s many programs that aid Americans with disabilities. But in terms of disability insurance, you know, it’s it is on the one hand the only benefit that is going to, you are it is contributory, right? You have to pay into it first, but it is the only benefit that is going to help you if you become disabled and can’t work for long periods of time, as many Americans do. But that also means that yes, the spending is actually higher than it is in some other programs. And so, you know, you have this incentive for some people to scan the system, and that’s tough. It’s a really tough thing. But again, not to say there’s many, many programs that aid disabled Americans or Americans with disabilities.
Amy Julia Becker: 45:09
So I want to like just also uh add a few things that I again in your book. Because I know you know that you’re an expert. Well, well, just that like fraud often comes from like, you know, large companies. But in terms of wealth, right. It’s not individuals. Two, there’s a lot of fraud that’s happening in the tax system. I mean, again, to the degree that fraud is happening, rich people are defrauding the gov government to and at like greater amounts because there’s more amount at stake than like the $50 snap example you gave. Yeah, exactly. Right. And then three, again, like what do we want to communicate to humans? We don’t trust you, we think you’re gonna lie, we’re gonna, you know, and again, I agree with you. We should have audits, we should have accountability, we should have measures. But going into a system of support with the assumption that you are going to try to get more than you deserve or need, um, I that just again communicates something about your value within our society, which I think is like counterproductive to who we want to be, who at least I want to be as an American and within our society. So I Yeah, absolutely.
Annie Lowrey: 46:18
And I think that you’re right that it is this like, are we weighing two sides of the scales here? Are we willing to humiliate and inconvenience millions of people to catch a small set of bad actors? Right.
Amy Julia Becker: 46:28
There you go.
Annie Lowrey: 46:29
Yes. Whereas, yeah, in the tax system, I think you’re totally right. To commit a really big fraud against the government, you got to have a really big income as an individual. Or, you know, this is why the real problem with fraud in Medicare and Medicaid, it’s on the provider side. And most providers are perfectly on the honest, they’re not trying to defraud the government. But like, yeah, you’re only gonna be able to defraud the government, defraud of so much. And I I do, and again, it’s this notion that like people making simple errors, right, then you’re a fraud risk, not your human who screwed up, your fraud risk, right? And um a human who’s screwed up on these really impossible, right? Like if things were simpler, if the government were doing more of the work for you, um, if we had reduced our overhead costs, then maybe we could spend more time going after folks who are purposefully defrauding the government, where that that is a really big problem. I’m not saying that it isn’t. Um, but I don’t know that inconveniencing and humiliating people up front is the way to deal with it. It’s not the way I would deal with it. I actually think that the IRS audit model is pretty good, right? If the IRS thinks that you’re a giant fraud risk, they will audit you every year. And um, you know, ideally we want people them to be auditing people with very high incomes. Again, the Elon, just to pick your favorite millionaire, billionaire, I guess now. Audit the high income people. That’s where the money is. But we do a ton of auditing of people, like very low income, often very low-income people, right? Who are getting the earned income tax credit, who are getting a child tax credit, who um are using these programs. And it’s like, okay, but well, how much money are you gonna recover? I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense. Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Amy Julia Becker: 48:13
Well, so this is, I mean, we could talk for hours and hours, but I want to conclude with um just reading something you wrote and ask me one last question about it. So this is towards the end of the book, and you wrote, if we accept that administrative burdens have health costs, which is to say it’s the time tax. Well, actually, uh maybe I’ll pause there. Explain for a minute what what do you mean that administrative burdens have health costs?
Annie Lowrey: 48:36
Yeah. So we know that the government is kind of wasting our time. They’re taking a lot of it. We don’t know the total hour count, but the hour counts that we have are enormous. And I think again, if we accept that a lot of this is not necessary, some of it is necessary, but a lot of it isn’t, right? They’re just taking our time, and that’s the one thing we can’t make more of it, right? Right. All of us have 24 hours in the day, and that’s it. And so I think yes, the government should do more, we should do less. Just think about strain. The strain that you might have from an unpleasant interaction, from the anxiety of knowing that you have to do this, from that feeling of like, man, I had to ask for help at a really tough moment, or I had to explain that I was in a situation of intimate partner violence, or I had to go and say that I lost my job and I’m going bankrupt and I am I’m not sure what I’m gonna do, right? That then to take you in this moment and load tons and tons of paperwork and procedure on you. And we do a lot of that because in our country, right, like income losses, insurance losses, and health conditions are deeply interlinked. So the number one, like one of the primary reasons for job loss is getting sick, right? You get sick and then you can’t work. And what are you supposed to do then? Right. The um um primary cause of bankruptcy in this country is health problems. It’s health problems. And so then, you know, if you are already in this place where you’re not feeling good, where you’re trying to recover, but then, oh my gosh, I don’t have insurance anymore. And oh my gosh, my income has gone way down. That’s the moment that we’re asking you to do all of this humiliating, embarrassing paperwork. And time, yeah, and time, right? And all of a sudden, right, like you might be not yourself anymore or in the hospital or going to rehab appointments, and again, you are income stressed, then you were time stressed, then you were all of these things all at once. We don’t have great measurements of this, but I see it. And I I think that we can look at the anecdotes right in front of all of our eyes and say, oh, this isn’t good. When you are at a moment of illness, sickness, or just otherwise strain, like maybe you need less to do, not more. Right. Um and so um the example that I give in the book is is this woman who I had met, she had a traumatic brain injury, which is like a particularly right, this is impairing her cognitive function in order to get that back. She needs to rest. She needs less to do. Right. Like one of the fundamental therapies for severe TBIs at the beginning is like just don’t concuss yourself again and and stop. Yeah. We’re gonna reintroduce care activity very carefully. And and you know, she was again not permanently, but she was cognitively impaired. It was really hard for her to do paperwork, but then she lost her job, she lost her insurance, she’s really low income, she’s like, What am I doing? At some point she kind of realizes she doesn’t have an apartment anymore and she’s like, I’m homeless. And then she has to go through this tremendous paperwork morass. Yeah. And so I think that there is a roundabout way of saying this, but I think we don’t know, we can’t count the public health cost, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. Right? Right when things get hardest, yeah, and some paper sense the lower income you are, and you know, yes, you you you’re gonna receive more on paper, right? But like we’re exacting this cost from you that’s gonna make your recovery harder. And so um it’s a thing that I just, you know, I’d love for us to do more research and to think about this in this more holistic sense of, you know, if you um I was actually talking with somebody to today who he’s a widower and his wife had had terminal cancer, and he was like, it just got harder and harder and harder at the end before she passed. Yeah. And, you know, just more paperwork, more insurance when when a person dies, right? Like that’s often tremendously burdensome for their families, just like the death certificates, the insurance, the like, oh, beneficiaries, do we have to do this? Do we have to do that? Do we what do we do about the estate? And is there an estate and what is the benefit in everything? And I I just think about it a lot that, you know, um, again, if you think about like just like think about a family member, you know, they get really sick and you’re like, what would you want to do to get them better as soon as possible? Right? Let me come do your laundry for you. Let me come like deliver some meals. Right. Let me take your dogs out on a walk. Like, I can’t make you better, but can I mow your lawn? Let’s let you worry about fewer things. Um and and we don’t as a society do that through the form of the government, even though I think that interpersonally we do it all the time, right? You know, churches or neighborhoods, just or synagogues or, you know, name your institution, even just your friends, right? Like your WhatsApp. Let’s like shower you with support. Let’s like make things as easy as we can because we can’t fix your body, but like let’s let you have the space to fix your own body for your body to fix itself if it can. And um I just think it’s really hard. And I I’m convinced personally, but I couldn’t prove it, that this is like kind of one of the reasons for the health inequalities that we have in this country, right? Where, you know, your health status is just so predicated on your income in a way that I think is, you know, I I don’t like it. That’s tough. That’s really tough.
Amy Julia Becker: 53:58
Yep. Well, and that’s this is um, I started reading a quotation of yours and then I asked you a question in the middle of it. So if we accept that administrative burdens have health costs, you write. The policy implication is clear. Simplify, regulate, guarantee, streamline, clarify, welcome. And then you end with make things as easy as possible for the most vulnerable. And I just kind of I wanted to like be able to say that out loud. Like, yes, like make things as easy as possible for the most vulnerable. And I love the way you just um explained or illustrated the way we do that kind of naturally as humans for neighbors and friends and people within our community. And again, not to say that the government needs to be in our business, but um, if we would simplify and regulate and provide a floor of stability for people, then that would begin to make things easier, um, even if not as easy as possible for the most vulnerable. And I think that’s just a really beautiful vision.
Annie Lowrey: 54:56
Totally. And I think that this like as easy as possible, right? Um we’re not making things as easy as possible and as is as practical, right? Again, there’s just so much of this. It’s not to say that everything needs to be easy and seamless, and right, like the there’s going to be some friction, but gosh, let’s just do what we can. And particularly for people who are vulnerable, and particularly, I think, for you know, vulnerable kids. Um, uh, if you’re a senior, we want you to have healthcare and we want you to have social security. We don’t want our beloved senior community members to be homeless, to not be able to eat, to not be able to get to the doctor. And and I think that thinking about that in terms of other vulnerable groups, again, because we are all gonna have these vulnerabilities at some point, right? Like, should it be that like if you lose your job because you got sick, you should also lose your insurance? Like, I’m not sure. Should the government make it make it really, really hard for you to access any of those things that you you should be getting as long as you qualify? So I think again, just thinking about that as easy as possible. Because I do think that sometimes we just either we’re not thinking about how to we think a lot about whether something exists and not whether we can access it, but then also just thinking in terms of right, like, okay, how how simple could this reasonably be is a great question.
Amy Julia Becker: 56:10
Yeah. Well, again, I could keep asking you questions.
Annie Lowrey: 56:14
I know I’m like, oh gosh, yeah. And um, it’s so nice to talk to, you know, and I just I believe that everybody’s an expert in their own experience. And so it’s nice. Um, I know that you have had your own experiences with these things, but um it’s it’s great to talk to it from somebody who I think has has seen this from this, you know, extraordinary personal view.
Amy Julia Becker: 56:35
Well, thank you. And I know the same has been true for you, and I love the um combination of the uh not just your own personal story, because that doesn’t come up a ton in the book, but you clearly also have a personal investment, like you’re passionate about this, as well as a tremendous command of the facts. So thank you. I appreciate it for all of that.
Annie Lowrey: 56:55
It’s nice to get into the place of um I try not to be angry and indignant for the most part, but I’m like, okay, about this, I’m gonna be angry and indignant. Every so often we need a little bit, a little bit of indignation. Not just, you know, at every every everything that is is thrown my way, right? Like, how dare this bagel not be perfect? But like this stuff, right? And I’m I am, I’m a little bit like we pay for this. Come on. We give the government eight trillion dollars. We are a wealthy society. I think that, yeah, like let’s let’s untie the knots that we can untie. We can do better, we can do better. Um, so but thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about it.
Amy Julia Becker: 57:32
My pleasure. Thank you, Annie. Thanks as always for listening to this episode of Reimagining the Good Life. If this conversation resonates with you, I’d love to invite you to subscribe to my Reimagining the Good Life newsletter on Substack. It extends this work. It’s work where we challenge assumptions about the good life, proclaim the inherent belovedness of every human being, and envision and build a world of belonging where everyone matters. So you’ll find the link to sign up in the show notes. And of course, if you are enjoying the show, we’re just at the beginning of a new season, which means that sometimes it falls off the screens of people even who followed in the past. So please um go ahead and follow it yourself, rate it, review it, that way others find it more easily, share it with a friend, send questions or ideas to me anytime. There’s a send us a text link at the end of the show notes, and I would love to hear from you. As we come to the conclusion of this uh first episode of this new season, I want to say thank you to Jake Hansen for editing this episode, and to Amber Beery, my director of content, for producing the show, and thank you for being here. Let’s all keep reimagining the good life together.
