The Time Tax

“In her lucid and important treatise, Lowrey does an admirable job depicting how we got here and how completely fixable the problem is…An unexpectedly inspiring vision from a book about red tape … Lowrey’s book joins what is a growing push to tackle the hassles and frictions that make people hate government.” - New York Times Book Review

“Excellent.” - New Yorker

“An important new book on the uses and abuses of bureaucracy to control citizens’ access to government services… As one of the nation’s foremost journalists covering poverty and inequality, Lowrey masterfully shows how the time tax helps to trap low-income Americans in poverty… Lowrey does the nation a great service in identifying a root cause of government dysfunction and public distrust.” - Washington Monthly

“Lowrey chronicles the growing burdens of government paperwork in The Time Tax, bringing verve to a dry topic.” - Wall Street Journal

“A full-bore denunciation of the American way of working for The Man for free… Lowrey closes with a reasoned set of proposed reforms… all to the end of citizens reclaiming stolen time… A persuasive work of advocacy journalism that warrants attention–and phone calls to one’s congresspeople.” - Kirkus Reviews

“Combining incisive history with empathetic, wide-ranging reporting, one of the best policy writers in the country pinpoints a problem all of us face too often–and outlines how we can finally fix it.” - The New Republic, “Book of the Week”

“Lowrey is speaking in an accessible and actionable way about the politics and policy of what it takes to make government that works.” - Brian Wanlass, Government Works

“The Time Tax does a masterful job at explaining the administrative burdens that people encounter when they interact with the safety next.” - Don Moynihan, Can We Still Govern? ​​​​​​​

“Annie Lowrey explains why government makes getting help so damn complicated…This isn’t just the same old argument about cutting government. Indeed, Lowrey would radically expand government in order to make it work better for us. It’s about time. Ours.” - Ron Charles, Ron Charles ​​​​​​​

Annie Lowrey is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She is the author of Give People Money, which was short-listed for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award. Prior to joining The Atlantic, she was a staff writer for The New York Times and New York magazine, as well as the Moneybox columnist for Slate. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their two children.

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