Inflated Hopes, Taxing Times: Fiscal Crisis, the Pocketbook Squeeze, and the Roots of the Tax Revolt.

[摘要] For the past three decades, tax politics have been almost synonymous with conservative politics. Scholars, journalists, and pundits searching for the roots of the conservative ascendance agree that the tax revolt of the 1970s – and its signature event, Californians’ approval of the property tax-slashing Proposition 13 in 1978 – was a key turning point that helped shift both U.S. tax policy and American politics to the right. My dissertation challenges this narrative. It places the ;;pocketbook squeeze” facing low- and middle-income Americans at the center of the story. It demonstrates that, rather than motivated by ideological fervor, the revolt sprang from both rising tax burdens on low- and middle-income Americans and a growing realization that ;;loopholes” in the tax system unfairly benefited the wealthy. The revolt began quietly, nearly two decades before Prop 13, much earlier than in most accounts. The combined effect of tax rates and tax inequity pushed the public towards an inchoate – but largely left-leaning, populist – critique of the American tax system. Indeed, left-leaning tax activists with roots in labor, civil rights, and consumer activism were among the first to successfully harness the public’s tax discontent as part of a ;;tax justice” movement.The central questions my dissertation attempts to answer is how a movement that began with low- and middle-income Americans and was first harnessed by the left eventually came to be seen as a conservative ;;revolt of the haves.” Rather than inevitable, the eventual conservative triumph was a highly contingent outcome dependent on the interplay between policymakers, the parties, activists, and interest groups. Despite their state and local successes in the late-1960s and early-1970s, left-leaning tax justice activists found the post-Watergate Democratic Party to be inhospitable, thanks to the ;;New Democrats” increasing focus on fiscal responsibility. In contrast, many of the GOP’s leaders in the late-1970s nurtured right-leaning groups. Though they did little to assist the passage of Prop 13, which was ultimately an inchoate expression of pocketbook frustrations, conservative tax activists were well-positioned to frame its passage as their victory, forever altering the course of American tax politics.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Political Realignment

[关键词] Tax Revolt;Political Realignment;Grassroots Politics;American and Canadian Studies;History (General);Social Sciences (General);Sociology;Humanities;Social Sciences;Independent Interdepartmental Degree Program