Michael J. Graetz (Columbia), presents The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Princeton University Press 2024) at Case Western today as part of the Sugarman Tax Lecture:
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.
Speaker Bio
Michael J. Graetz, Professor Emeritus at Columbia Law School and Professor Emeritus and Professorial Lecturer at Yale Law Schools, is a leading expert on national and international tax law. His new book, The Power to Destroy—How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America was published in Feb. 2024 by Princeton University Press. Other recent scholarship, including his book The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Security and How to Fight It (with Ian Shapiro, Harvard University Press, 2020) has focused on issues of economic inequality and insecurity. Graetz has written a number of books on federal domestic and international taxation, including a leading law school text, in addition to books on the Supreme Court, energy policy and social insurance along with nearly 100 articles on a wide range of domestic and international taxation, health policy, and social insurance issues.
After teaching at Yale Law School for more than 25 years, Graetz joined the Columbia Law School faculty in 2009. Before to his time at Yale, Graetz was Professor of Law and Social Sciences at the California Institute of Technology; and a professor of Law at the University of Southern California and the University of Virginia.
In addition to his academic career, Graetz has held several positions in the federal government. He was assistant to the secretary and special counsel for the Department of the Treasury in 1992, and deputy assistant secretary for tax policy at the Department of the Treasury from 1990 to 1992. Graetz is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow. He received an award from Esquire Magazine for work in connection with the provision of shelter for the homeless. He was awarded the Daniel M. Holland Medal by the National Tax Association for outstanding contributions to the study and practice of public finance and was the first law professor to receive the Distinguished Service Award from the Tax Foundation. Graetz earned his JD from the University of Virginia and his BBA from Emory University.
