Rich People's Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent (Studies in Postwar American Political Development)

On tax day, April 15, 2010, hundreds of thousands of Americans demonstrated with signs demanding lower taxes on the richest one percent. Where do protest movements like this come from? Rich people are an unpopular minority with plenty of political influence. Why would rich people need to demonstrate in the streets to demand lower taxes-and why would anyone who wasn't rich join in the protest on their behalf?

Such rich people's movements are hardy perennials of American politics. Ever since the ratification of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913, they have emerged whenever public policies are perceived to threaten the property rights of rich people. The protesters on behalf of the rich have picked up the protest tactics of the poor and powerless because they have been organized and led by activists who have acquired their skills and protest techniques from other social movements, from the Populists and Progressives of the early twentieth century to the feminists and anti-war activists of the mid-twentieth century.

At times when conservative Republicans are in power, rich people's movements have helped to bring about some of the biggest tax cuts for the rich in American history. This is the untold story of the tax clubs and Tea Parties that have shaped American politics and policy for the last hundred years.

"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 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.)" Publishers Weekly Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Isaac William Martin is an associate professor of sociology at the University of California - San Diego. He is the author of The Permanent Tax Revolt, and co-editor of After the Tax Revolt: California's Proposition 13 Turns 30 and The New Fiscal Sociology.

Preface

Introduction: The Riddle of Rich People's Movements

Chapter One: The Revolution of 1913

Chapter Two: Populism against the Income Tax

Chapter Three: The Sixteenth Amendment Repealers

Chapter Four: The Most Sinister Lobby

Chapter Five: The Power of Women

Chapter Six: The Radical Rich

Chapter Seven: Strange Bedfellows

Chapter Eight: The Temporary Triumph of Estate Tax Repeal

Conclusion: The Century of Rich People's Movements