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The power to destroy : how the antitax movement hijacked America / Michael J. Graetz

by Graetz, Michael J., author.

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Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2024]

Taxation -- United States.

Taxation -- Moral and ethical aspects -- United States.

Taxation -- Political aspects -- United States.

Political planning -- United States -- Economic policy.

United States -- Politics and government -- 20th century.

United States -- Politics and government -- 21st century.

9780691225548 (hardcover) :

0691225540 (hardcover)

viii, 359 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Chapter 1: Reset from the right -- PART I Takeoff (1978 - 1981) -- Chapter 2: A political earthquake -- Chapter 3: Christian evangelicals join the antitax movement -- Chapter 4: Prophets of the supply-side gospel -- Chapter 5: Reganomics -- PART II Turbulence (1982 - 1994) -- Chapter 6: Resistance -- Chapter 7: An uneasy political marriage -- Chapter 8: The triumvirate -- Chapter 9: A President undone -- Chapter 10: Showdown and shutdown -- PART III Resurgence (1997 - 2023) Chapter 11: Moving the goalposts -- Chapter 12: The apple sometimes falls far from the tree -- Chapter 13: The nation splits apart -- Chapter 14: Tax cuts are Trump -- Chapter 15: Tax the rich? -- Chapter 16: The end of American exceptionalism -- Acknowledgements -- Notes -- Index

How the antitax fringe went mainstream--and now threatens America's future! The postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards--and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity. Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a "second American Revolution," setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy. In The Power to Destroy, Michael Graetz tells the story of the antitax movement and how it holds America hostage--undermining the nation's ability to meet basic needs and fix critical problems. In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the power to tax entails "the power to destroy." But The Power to Destroy argues that tax opponents now wield this destructive power. Attacking the IRS, protecting tax loopholes, and pushing tax cuts from Reagan to Donald Trump, the antitax movement is threatening the nation's social safety net, increasing inequality, ballooning the national debt, and sapping America's financial strength. The author chronicles how the movement originated as a fringe enterprise promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric, and how--abetted by conservative media and Grover Norquist's "taxpayer protection pledge"--it evolved into a mainstream political force. The important story of how the antitax movement came to dominate and distort politics, and how it impedes rational budgeting, equality, and opportunities, The Power to Destroy is essential reading for understanding American life today.--Publisher description.

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