Rich People's Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent
ISBN: 9780199367733
Platform/Publisher: Oxford Academic / Oxford University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Political Science;

U.C. Davis sociologist Martin (The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics) recounts a century of efforts to repeal or sharply curtail the federal income tax, which was instituted in 1913. His book pays homage and is a worthy counterpart to Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward's classic Poor People's Movements. The anti-tax movement, which "defined the rich as the constituency [it] sought to benefit" and which was led by community organizers from the right, borrowed methods of mobilizing local groups from such liberal causes as women's suffrage. While the anti-tax advocates never succeeded, they had a real impact when their cause was linked with related initiatives, such as a federal balanced-budget amendment. (In 1982, the Senate passed a constitutional amendment that combined the two proposals, but it wasn't backed by a two-thirds majority in the House, as is required for it to be enacted.) And the movement influenced tax legislation-especially laws advanced by Coolidge, Reagan, and G.W. Bush, who were all sympathetic to the cause. Reagan's 1981 tax cut, for example, reduced marginal rates for the wealthiest from 70% to 50%. Martin explores the movement's influence on the GOP during the past 30 years, noting that the party has come to be dominated by "anti-tax campaigners" and predicting that "rich people's movements will continue to influence public policy... and perhaps even increase... the extremes of inequality in America." 6 b&w illus. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.


Isaac William Martin is Professor of Sociology at the University of California-San Diego. He is the author of The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politics.

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