Vanessa Williamson —The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History - With Dorian Warren

Americans have always fought over the meaning of freedom and equality. What is not commonly recognized is that the battles most pivotal in defining our democracy, from the framing of the Constitution to the decades-long backlash to the civil rights movement, hinged on one issue--taxes.In The Price of Democracy, Vanessa S. Williamson challenges the myth that Americans are instinctively anti-tax, revealing that fights over taxes have always been proxies for deeper conflicts over who is included in "We the People." Poorer people have repeatedly built movements that sought to tax all Americans to create a more equal and democratic nation. Wealthy people have responded by constraining the power to tax and stifling democracy through voting restrictions, gerrymandering, and violence. Yet as hard as anti-tax crusaders have fought to create an America that redistributes not from rich to poor, but from non-white people to rich white people, the battle rages on.The Price of Democracy uncovers how fights for fiscal fairness have defined American history, delivering a powerful message to the present: that taxes are the public's most powerful weapon in the fight for a real democracy.Vanessa S. Williamson is a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The author or coauthor of two previous books, her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic, Nation, and elsewhere. She lives in Washington, DC.Williamson is in conversation with Dorian Warren, co-president of Community Change and Community Change Action, and co-founder of the Economic Security Project. Warren taught for over a decade at the University of Chicago and Columbia University. He's the co-author of The Hidden Rules of Race, co-editor of Race and American Political Development, and has penned numerous academic articles. Dorian previously worked as a guest host and contributor at MSNBC. He sits on several boards, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights Education Fund Board and The Nation Magazine Editorial Board. As a commentator on public affairs, Warren has appeared regularly on television and radio and has also written for The New York Times, Newsweek, and Ebony.com, among others. https://politics-prose.com/book/9781541606111?ic_referral=jbSh1scBNjGDf1s-9UclTZW18nBKosz3yaVHE05wh54wM1fVbi2C-H9Wu4tSLIjuT0nkt8obRBYK3MrQhvNK4uGTijPZMHIvK6EuWmLnQWzTSHSlIQlwsKeStO8TNX3AeTfdKU4