Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Public Policy
Episode: Michael J. Graetz, "The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America" (Princeton UP, 2024)
Description: The anti-tax movement is "the most important overlooked social and political movement of the last half century", according to our guest Michael J. Graetz. In his book The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America (Princeton UP, 2024), Graetz chronicles the movement from a fringe theory promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric to a highly organized mainstream lobbying force, funded by billionaires, that dominates and distorts politics. Building on vague and disproven theories about "supply side" economics, the movement has undermined long-held beliefs that taxes are a reasonabl...