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More copies of this ISBN:This title in other formats:The Permanent Tax Revolt: How the Property Tax Transformed American Politicsby Isaac William Martin
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Tax cuts are such a pervasive feature of the American political landscape that the political establishment rarely questions them. Since 2001, Congress has abolished the tax on inherited wealth and passed a major income tax cut every year, including two of the three largest income tax cuts in American history despite a long drawn-out war and massive budget deficits. The Permanent Tax Revolt traces the origins of this anti-tax campaign to the 1970s, in particular, to the influence of grassroots tax rebellions as homeowners across the United States rallied to protest their local property taxes. Isaac William Martin advances the provocative new argument that the property tax revolt was not a conservative backlash against big government, but instead a defensive movement for government protection from the market. The tax privilege that the tax rebels were defending was in fact one of the largest government social programs in the postwar era. While the movement to defend homeowners' tax breaks drew much of its inspiration—and many of its early leaders—from the progressive movement for welfare rights, politicians on both sides of the aisle quickly learned that supporting big tax cuts was good politics. In time, American political institutions and the strategic choices made by the protesters ultimately channeled the movement toward the kind of tax relief favored by the political right, with dramatic consequences for American politics today.
Book News Annotation:Martin (sociology, U. of California at San Diego) traces the current
centrality of tax-cutting policies in American politics, embodied
primarily in the Republican Party, to the tax cut revolts of the
1970s, which he argues was a broad-based political response to the
fact that many states had been eliminating the informal tax privilege
of fractional assessment. Fractional assessment was a hidden social
policy, according to Martin, in which subsidized homeownership served
as a form of protection against the risk of income shocks and the tax
revolt sparked by their revocation can thus be seen as a demand that
government provide protection against the vicissitudes of the market,
despite the fact that the anti-tax movement was later captured the
forces of the right and made a signature issue for the Republican
Party.
Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) About the AuthorIsaac William Martin is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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