{
  "id": 3727208,
  "title": "The Time Tax",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/27/the-time-tax",
  "topic": "culture",
  "section": "Culture",
  "published": "2026-08-27T11:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Atlantic",
    "slug": "the-atlantic",
    "url": "https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/08/time-tax-administrative-bureaucracy/688322/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Marcella Patino, a single mother of three, was struggling to make ends meet in South Salt Lake, Utah. At 33 years old, she earned $300 a week working as a manicurist, and hoped to increase her income once she completed her aesthetician training. However, her rent and living expenses left her in a precarious financial situation. The state of Utah provided Patino with various forms of assistance, including Medicaid, food stamps, and monthly cash aid. Despite these benefits, she still found herself falling into debt and losing her aid multiple times.\n\nRecently, Patino lost her cash assistance and SNAP benefits, leaving her uncertain about where the next month's expenses would come from. Her caseworker was unable to provide answers as to why her assistance was terminated and she was left trying to navigate the complicated system on her own. Patino relied on food banks, her mother's help, and her neighbors to get by, but she still struggled to keep up with her bills and maintain stable housing.\n\nThe situation became even more dire when the salon where Patino worked closed down, leaving her unemployed for two weeks before finding another job. When she applied for her new job, her status on Medicaid was revoked, causing her to seek care in the emergency room. Patino's experience with the state's assistance programs was a constant source of frustration and stress, with her benefits being turned off all the time and requiring her to constantly reapply for aid. As the Circles nonprofit worked to help Patino increase her income, she faced a seemingly endless cycle of bureaucracy and paperwork, with no end in sight.",
  "summary": "This is what happens when you provide benefits the way the United States does: by discretion, with skepticism, through a perplexing variety of programs with a surfeit of fussy rules.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}