The Atlantic Daily: How the Government Learned to Waste Your Time

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Welcome to America, where bureaucratic headaches are as commonplace as hot dogs on the Fourth of July.

My colleague Annie Lowrey argues that all the collective hours wasted on, say, filling out overly complicated IRS forms are essentially a tax. The “time tax,” as she calls it, is a scourge, and the government needs to take responsibility for it.

Annie’s argument is worth reading in full. But if you’re, well, short on time, I’ve summarized a few key things to know below.

1. The time tax is everywhere.

“To make sure that the safety net catches us, to make sure that our social-insurance programs insure us, to make sure that we get what we pay Uncle Sam for, we work as our own health-care administrators. Our own tax professionals. Our own social workers. Our own disability-law experts. Our own child-support advocates, long-term-care reps, and public-housing officials.”

2. It’s regressive.

“Programs for the wealthy tend to be easy, automatic, and guaranteed. You do not need to prostrate yourself before a caseworker to get the benefits of a 529 college-savings plan. You do not need to urinate in a cup to get a tax write-off for your home, boat, or plane.”

3. It’s racist.

“Today, programs used disproportionately by Black Americans have more complicated enrollment criteria and more time-consuming application processes than programs used disproportionately by white Americans.”

4. It undermines confidence in government.

“People think that government cannot work, because government does not work. So what reasonable person would trust government to work?”

So how do we fix the time tax? To start, we should monitor it, Annie writes.

The news in three sentences:

(1) Every week seems like infrastructure week, we know: The parties reached a compromise on the major new bill. (2) Google and Facebook mandated vaccines for their U.S. offices. (3) The Olympics continue, with the U.S. leading in medals overall, and Japan in gold medals.

What to read if … you’re looking for practical advice on how to manage your risk in light of Delta:

• If you’re vaccinated, your risk of a symptomatic breakthrough case remains very low. And if you do get COVID-19, your immune system is better prepared to handle an infection than it would have been without the vaccine.

• The CDC now recommends fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors in communities with “substantial or high transmission.” See if that applies to you.   

• Should you take additional precautions? It depends. Our staff writer Katherine J. Wu recommends checking local virus conditions like the weather every day.

Tonight’s Atlantic-approved activity:

A new HBO documentary about the chaos at Woodstock ’99 is “so vivid as to instill dread at the thought of all the gatherings to come.”

A break from the news:

Don’t read this if you’re eating.

Every weekday evening, our editors guide you through the biggest stories of the day, help you discover new ideas, and surprise you with moments of delight. Subscribe to get this delivered to your inbox.