While, as Benjamin Franklin quipped, it may be that nothing is certain but death and taxes, only the former can be considered the great equalizer. Death comes for us all, regardless of our social or economic status. Taxes, on the other hand, have always been far more complicated.
Vanessa S. Williamson's new book, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, takes us on a fascinating journey through the history of taxation from colonization to the present day. In doing so, she makes a clear and, I'd argue, unassailable case that taxation, far from being a dry matter of fiscal policy, lies at the very heart of democracy itself.
A senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, and the author of Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes, Williamson is eminently qualified to lay bare the intricate relationship between tax policy, wealth distribution, and political power. Conveniently for us, she does so in prose that is clear and accessible, while revealing histories that are sometimes horrifying, occasionally humorous, and consistently surprising.
Each of the book's three parts — Taxation for a Republic, Taxation for Black Liberation, and Taxation for the General Welfare — includes little-known stories that have nonetheless had a profound impact on how we function as a country today. Every single chapter exposed a startling fact that I'd never encountered before. And I say this as someone who reads a fair amount of U.S. history and who has developed a training module on the racialized history of taxation in this country.
Consider, for example, the Boston Tea Party. Like many, I'd learned that colonists were fed up with being taxed while they had no representation in British Parliament. What I hadn't learned was that "the patriots who threw the tea into Boston Harbor were opposing not a tax hike, but a corporate tax cut." The British government's plan to keep the East India Company afloat would have actually made tea less expensive for the colonists. The patriots' real concern was not taxation but self-governance — so much so that they continued paying taxes, redirecting their payments to a patriot treasurer instead of a loyalist one. Williamson makes the point that "To the extent the American Revolution was about taxation, it was about the desire of Americans to tax themselves."
The book's early chapters reveal that even the framers of the Constitution were primarily concerned with restraining popular control over public funds. "Our federal government," Williamson argues, "was designed by elites afraid that the American people had too much power over the public purse." Alexander Hamilton — who also advocated for lifetime terms for the senators and the president — made his disdain for the masses clear: "The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God… it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right."
This antipathy towards true and full participation in democracy is one of the book's throughlines, and it is essential to understanding how tax policy has been used to define — and limit — citizenship along lines of race and class. Williamson argues that "public revenue is contested most fiercely when the scope of the public itself is disputed." Whenever marginalized groups have demanded inclusion, from working-class suffrage movements in Britain to the civil rights era in the United States, the backlash has often been linked to taxation.
Especially in its second and third sections, The Price of Democracy demonstrates how time and again people who are poor, working class, and middle class have fought to raise taxes (including their own) to meet the shared needs of the public. But at every turn, Williamson writes, "The possibility that people of moderate means would have a say over the tax system has persistently led wealthy people to undermine governments' democratic practices and fiscal capacity."
Perhaps most chilling is how familiar today's anti-tax and "taxpayer's rights" rhetoric sounds. It's clear why Williamson's introduction notes: "It may well be a matter of temperament whether, on balance, readers will find it more reassuring or disheartening to know that 'we have been this way before.'" The echoes across the centuries are unmistakable and unsettling.
While it would be a valuable read at any point, The Price of Democracy feels essential today. The book's content embodies the principle of Sankofa, reminding us of the importance of looking to the past to build a better future. Anyone who cares about preserving democracy would be well served by reading it.
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