The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America

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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 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.

Reviews

"Eloquent and absorbing."---David Cay Johnston, American Prospect
"'The Power to Destroy' belongs in the growing pantheon of books that help us understand how the GOP became what it is today. Its also an essential resource for understanding the fiscal storm clouds that Graetz sees on the horizon."---Brian Rosenwald, Washington Post
"[An] entertaining way of getting beyond the antiseptic technical aspects of tax to an understanding of how tax law is really made. . . . A must-read."---Martin A. Sullivan, Tax Notes
"An extraordinarily well-documented, informative, and compelling analysis of the movement Ronald Reagan celebrated as 'a second American Revolution.'"---Glenn C. Altschuler, Messenger
"[An] insightful and disturbing analysis. . . . Through his accessible presentation of recent decades of political battles over interconnected issues, such as the rights fight for the tax-exempt status of religious schools and its pushback against the IRSs 1971 policy that tax-exempt schools must be racially nondiscriminatory, Graetz effectively makes the case that antitaxation has been the most overlooked social and political movement in recent American history. This is a must-read for those concerned about the U.S. economys growing reliance on debt." * Publishers Weekly (Starred review) *
"Illuminating. . . . An accessible, searching look at the injustices built into the American way of taxation." * Kirkus Reviews *
"A landmark contribution to the literature on U.S. fiscal politics."---Joseph J. Thorndike, Tax Notes

Author Bio

Michael J. Graetz is professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School and a leading authority on tax politics and policy. He served in the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Policy and is the author and coauthor of many books, including Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth (Princeton) and The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right.