Marginal Revolution Invites Reader Questions for Upcoming Conversation With Annie Lowrey
Key Takeaways
- •Marginal Revolution is preparing a Conversation interview with journalist Annie Lowrey and is asking readers to submit questions.
- •The announcement was published on August 22, 2026, and ends with a direct request for audience suggestions.
- •Lowrey’s upcoming book, The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time—and How to Fix It, focuses on the time burden of dealing with government services.
- •The post links the book’s theme to research on administrative burden and notes Lowrey has previously reported on the topic for The Atlantic.
- •The blog’s Conversation series uses long-form interviews by economist Tyler Cowen and later publishes the finished discussion on the site.
Marginal Revolution has announced that it will host a Conversation with journalist Annie Lowrey, and the blog is asking readers to submit questions for the interview. The post, published on August 22, 2026, closes with a direct appeal to its audience: "So what should I ask her?" Soliciting reader questions ahead of an interview is a regular practice of the series, with suggestions typically submitted through the post's comments, and the finished Conversation is subsequently published on the blog.
According to the announcement, Lowrey has a new book coming out, The Time Tax: How the Government Wastes Our Time―and How to Fix It (Amazon), which the post describes as "new and very interesting." As its subtitle indicates, the book takes up the time that dealing with government consumes and how that burden might be reduced. The theme sits alongside an established body of public-policy research on "administrative burden" — the learning, compliance, and psychological costs people face when accessing public services — examined in work such as Pamela Herd and Donald Moynihan's 2018 book Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means. Lowrey has also reported on the time costs of government services at The Atlantic, including a 2021 feature on the topic.
For background, the post quotes Wikipedia:
Annie M. Lowrey… is an American journalist who writes on politics and economic policy for The Atlantic. Previously, Lowrey covered economic policy for The New York Times and prior to that was the Moneybox columnist for Slate>). She was also a staff writer for the Washington Independent and was on the editorial staffs of Foreign Policy and The New Yorker. She is a proponent of universal basic income.
Lowrey is also the author of Give People Money: How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World (2018), a book-length case for universal basic income. That book appeared amid heightened attention to the idea, as pilots such as Finland's 2017–2018 basic income experiment drew international coverage and, in the United States, Andrew Yang later made a universal basic income the centerpiece of his 2020 Democratic presidential campaign. Marginal Revolution's Conversation series features long-form interviews conducted by economist Tyler Cowen, who co-authors the blog with Alex Tabarrok; past guests have spanned economics, journalism, and public policy.
Original announcement: What should I ask Annie Lowrey?
