Princeton University Press
The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America
Key Metrics
- Michael J Graetz
- Princeton University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780691225548
- -
- -
- Political Science > American Government - General
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
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 it is tax opponents who 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 book 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.
Author Bio
Michael J. Graetz is the Wilbur H. Friedman Professor of Tax Law and the Columbia Alumni Professor of Tax Law at Columbia Law School. He is also the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law Emeritus and Professional Lecturer, Yale Law School. Before coming to Columbia in 2009, he was the Justus S. Hotchkiss Professor of Law at Yale University, where he had taught since 1983.
Before Yale, he was a professor of law at the University of Virginia and the University of Southern California Law Schools and Professor of Law and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. His most recent book is The End of Energy: The Unmaking of America’s Environment, Security and Independence, published in spring 2011 by MIT Press.
His previous books include 100 Million Unnecessary Returns: A Simple, Fair, and Competitive Tax Plan for the United States (Yale University Press, 2008); Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth (Princeton University Press, 2005); True Security: Rethinking Social Insurance (Yale University Press, 1999); The U.S. Income Tax: What It Is, How It Got That Way and Where We Go From Here (W.W. Norton & Co, 1999) (a paperback edition of the book originally published as The Decline [and Fall?] of the Income Tax) and Foundations of International Income Taxation (Foundation Press, 2003).
He is also the co-author of a leading law school coursebook, Federal Income Taxation: Principles and Policies (Foundation Press, 2009).
His publications on the subject of Federal taxation also include more than 60 articles on a wide range of tax, international taxation, health policy, and social insurance issues in books and scholarly journals.
During January-June 1992, Michael Graetz served as Assistant to the Secretary and Special Counsel at the Treasury Department. In 1990 and 1991, he served as Treasury Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy. Professor Graetz in 2013 was awarded the Daniel M. Holland Medal by the National Tax Association for contributions to the study and practice of public finance.
He has been a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, and he received an award from Esquire Magazine for courses and work in connection with provision of shelter for the homeless. He served on the Commissioner's Advisory Group of the Internal Revenue Service. He served previously in the Treasury Department in the Office of Tax Legislative Counsel during 1969-1972. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Professor Graetz is a graduate of Emory University (B.B.A. 1966) and the University of Virginia Law School (J.D. 1969). A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Michael Graetz is married to Brett Dignam and has five children.
Source: Yale Law School
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