Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent
When we think of a social movement, we usually picture poor people taking to the streets. But ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, a small minority of well-to-do Americans have fomented nonviolent rebellions to protest against the taxation of the rich. It is surprising to find ordinary Americans using such tactics as demonstrations and civil disobedience to demand lower taxes for all rich people, since rich people usually have easier and less conspicuous ways to protect their assets. It is even more surprising to find that such public, grassroots campaigns sometimes work. This book traces the history of rich people’s movements in the United States, from the tax club movement of the 1920s, through the grassroots campaigns for constitutional tax limitation of the 1930s and 1940s, the movement to repeal federal income taxes in the 1950s and 1960s, the campaign for a balanced budget and tax limitation amendment in the 1970s and 1980s, and the campaign to repeal estate taxes in the 1990s. It shows that rich people’s movements emerge in response to tax policy changes that are perceived to threaten the rights of property owners, and that rich people and their allies turn to the social movement repertoire when they are recruited to protest movements and taught protest tactics by experienced social movement entrepreneurs. These movements have contributed to bringing about some of the largest tax cuts for the rich in American history, and have developed an activist tradition that has exercised a major influence on the Republican Party and more generally on the politics of inequality in the United States.