Böcker av Michael J. Graetz

How the antitax fringe went mainstream--and now threatens America's future The postwar United States enjoyed large, widely distributed economic rewards--and most Americans accepted that taxes were a reasonable price to pay for living in a society of shared prosperity. Then in 1978 California enacted Proposition 13, a property tax cap that Ronald Reagan hailed as a "second American Revolution," setting off an antitax, antigovernment wave that has transformed American politics and economic policy. In The Power to Destroy, Michael Graetz tells the story of the antitax movement and how it holds America hostage--undermining the nation's ability to meet basic needs and fix critical problems. In 1819, Chief Justice John Marshall declared that the power to tax entails "the power to destroy." But The Power to Destroy argues that it is tax opponents who now wield this destructive power. Attacking the IRS, protecting tax loopholes, and pushing tax cuts from Reagan to Donald Trump, the antitax movement is threatening the nation's social safety net, increasing inequality, ballooning the national debt, and sapping America's financial strength. The book chronicles how the movement originated as a fringe enterprise promoted by zealous outsiders using false economic claims and thinly veiled racist rhetoric--and how, abetted by conservative media and Grover Norquist's "taxpayer protection pledge," it evolved into a mainstream political force. The important story of how the antitax movement came to dominate and distort politics, and how it impedes rational budgeting, equality, and opportunities, The Power to Destroy is essential reading for understanding American life today.

Americans face economic hardship but respond with fantastical solutions, from tax-cut magic to the end of capitalism. Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro focus on what truly worries people: their own insecurity. The authors propose concrete reforms affecting jobs, unemployment, health care, and wages and share strategies to achieve changes people need.

Contains detailed text and explanatory materials. This seventh edition covers recent regulations, rulings, cases and other new developments, including the many changes made to the Internal Revenue Code by the several tax acts that Congress passed since the previous edition.

Social security in the USA may be the greatest triumph of American domestic policy. But true security has not been achieved. This work shows that the nation's system of social insurance is riddled with gaps, inefficiencies and inequities.

This fast-paced book by Yale professors Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro unravels the following mystery: How is it that the estate tax, which has been on the books continuously since 1916 and is paid by only the wealthiest two percent of Americans, was repealed in 2001 with broad bipartisan support? The mystery is all the more striking because the repeal was not done in the dead of night, like a congressional pay raise. It came at the end of a multiyear populist campaign launched by a few individuals, and was heralded by its supporters as a signal achievement for Americans who are committed to the work ethic and the American Dream. Graetz and Shapiro conducted wide-ranging interviews with the relevant players: members of congress, senators, staffers from the key committees and the Bush White House, civil servants, think tank and interest group representatives, and many others. The result is a unique portrait of American politics as viewed through the lens of the death tax repeal saga. Graetz and Shapiro brilliantly illuminate the repeal campaign's many fascinating and unexpected turns--particularly the odd end result whereby the repeal is slated to self-destruct a decade after its passage. They show that the stakes in this fight are exceedingly high; the very survival of the long standing American consensus on progressive taxation is being threatened. Graetz and Shapiro's rich narrative reads more like a political drama than a conventional work of scholarship. Yet every page is suffused by their intimate knowledge of the history of the tax code, the transformation of American conservatism over the past three decades, and the wider political implications of battles over tax policy.

To most Americans, the United States tax code has become a vast and confounding puzzle. In 1940, the instructions to the form 1040 were about four pages long. Today they have ballooned to more than a hundred pages, and the form itself contains more than ten schedules andtwenty worksheets. The complete tax code totals about 2.8 million wordsabout four times the length of War and Peace. In this intriguing book, Michael Graetz maintains that our tax code has become a tangle of loopholes, paperwork, and inconsistenciesa massive social program that fails tests of simplicity and fairness. More important, our tax system has failed to keep pace with the changing economy, creating burdens and wastes of resources that weigh our nation down.Graetz offers a solution. Imagine a world in which most Americans pay no income tax at all, and those who do enjoy a far simpler tax processall this without decreasing government revenues or removing key incentives for employer-sponsored health care plans and pensions. As Graetzadeptly and clearly describes, this world is within our grasp.