The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America

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 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.

About the Author :
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.

Review :
"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. It’s 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 "A landmark contribution to the literature on U.S. fiscal politics."---Joseph J. Thorndike, Tax Notes "With admirable grace and exquisite skill, Michael J. Graetz . . . tracks the rise of the antitax movement and the destruction it has wrought since the 1970s.. . . . The Power to Destroy masterfully narrates the modern antitax movement, a half century of pied pipers leading the country over the debt cliff and into a pit of inequality. Graetz deepened my understandings, both of what I remember of this past and much that was new to me. Whether you come to this book with memories, political disquiet, or curiosity—as a scholar or a citizen—it will reward your investment. In the glare of what 2025 will bring, it may also keep you up at night."---Pamela Walker Laird, Reviews in American History "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 right’s fight for the tax-exempt status of religious schools and its pushback against the IRS’s 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. economy’s growing reliance on debt." "Illuminating. . . . An accessible, searching look at the injustices built into the American way of taxation." "Panoramic and vibrant. . . . The Power to Destroy is a fascinating and brilliant account of how a fringe social movement to cut taxes moved into the mainstream and transformed modern American political life. . . . [Graetz] makes a compelling case for how and why the antitax movement might be the most important and overlooked aspect of modern American conservatism."---Ajay K. Mehrotra, Political Science Quarterly