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Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

How the Anti-Tax Movement Hijacked America (with Michael Graetz)

Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer

Civic Ventures

Business, Government, News, Politics

4.81.5K Ratings

🗓️ 13 August 2024

⏱️ 53 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This week, Nick and Goldy are joined by Michael Graetz to discuss his new book, "The Power to Destroy: How the Anti-Tax Movement Hijacked America.” Graetz asserts that while the anti-tax movement is often overlooked, it has shaped policy by intertwining with issues of race and economic ideology, diverging from Keynesian economics in favor of neoliberal supply-side economics that results in extreme wealth accumulation at the top. He argues for major tax reforms, including a carbon tax and the implementation of a value-added tax, as potential solutions to creating a more equitable and sustainable tax code that would benefit the middle class. Their conversation also revisits the historical origins of the anti-tax movement in the United States and highlights how tax policy is not just shaped by economic theory— it’s also shaped by cultural and social differences. Michael Graetz is a 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 co-author of many books, including Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth and The Burger Court and the Rise of the Judicial Right. Further reading: The Power to Destroy: How the Antitax Movement Hijacked America The Graetz Competitive Tax Plan, Updated for 2022 Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth Website: http://pitchforkeconomics.com Twitter: @PitchforkEcon, @NickHanauer, @civicaction Instagram: @pitchforkeconomics Threads: pitchforkeconomics YouTube: @pitchforkeconomics Substack: The Pitch

Transcript

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0:00.0

The rising inequality and growing political instability that we see today are the direct result of decades of bad economic theory.

0:10.0

It's time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, not the top down.

0:15.0

Middle out economics is the answer.

0:18.0

Because Wall Street didn't build this country.

0:20.0

Great middle class built this country.

0:22.0

The more the middle class thrives, the better the economy from the middle out.

0:42.0

Welcome to the show. build the economy from the middle out.

0:42.6

Welcome to the show. Today's conversation Nick is really close to my heart because I know you know but I don't know how many of our regular listeners know my origin story which was we have this guy in Washington State named Tim Iman, who made a career filing

1:08.6

anti-tax initiatives and kind of initially as a out of anger, but as a joke between me and some friends,

1:17.0

I filed my own statewide initiative to proclaim this guy, Tim, I'm in a horse's ass.

1:25.8

And weirdly, out of that joke initiative,

1:30.2

I started getting a lot of coverage in the press and then I started a blog which took off

1:36.7

then I got a radio show then I got hired by an all-weekly and then after they were tired with me, you hired me, Nick.

1:46.3

So that's how I got here.

1:47.8

I got here out of the anti-tax movement and my anger out of it.

1:54.0

Yeah, well, I'm not sure today's guest is going to make you less angry.

2:00.0

Oh no.

2:02.0

Because we're talking to one of the nation's experts in tax policy.

2:08.0

A professor emeritus at Columbia Law School and Yale Law School, Michael Gretz, has just published a book

2:15.2

called The Power to Destroy How the Anti Tax Movement

2:18.0

hijacked America.

2:19.8

And his book sort of tells the story of,

...

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