I recently read this book (The Price of Democracy by Vanessa Williamson) and really enjoyed it. id recommend folks read it but in a nutshell it took a historical look and the US and how tax policy influenced history and was influenced by history in this country. Tons of citations and really intriguing facts and takes in the book. one of the big takeaways was looking at the trends and effects of progressive vs regressive tax policy throughout history. She also looked at the last 50 years (with as good of a magnifying glass as she did for the first 200 years in the first 2/3rds of the book) and one bug take way was that our tax policies became more regressive again with the start of Reganomics. Then as the decades went on the Republicans started being less conservative and more just antitax and more government disfunction while the Dems really never provided good opposition or alternatives leading to very large inequality, huge budgets, partisanship, and big government deficits today. I'm probably doing a bad job at making a book report but it's a good book you should read it.
Then I listened to this Freakonomics radio podcast today ( 10 myths about the US tax system) and Jessica Reidl provided quite a few counter points to many of the conclusions Vanessa drew in her book. Jessica talked about the myth that the US doesn't tax the rich that much and said we actually do and in general currently have one of the most progressive tax systems. They both agreed that a spending problem seems to be quite a bit the issue but Vanessa in the book talks about the staying power of social security because it's self funded but Jessica says that the fact it's self funded is a myth. So it's hard to know what's the truth here and the host did not really challenge any of her statements which I think would have helped establish more credibility. Though her data driven background seems to made her fairly credible.
The role and effects of taxes in our society are huge and complicated and trying to decide different points of view is tough and I'm not sure what to think have hearing two really educated people talk about some many good issues. I'm guessing probably both of them are right in some ways because tax policy and it's effects is a complex issue and I find a nuanced view is usually most accurate
TLDR: the book "The Price of Democracy" and the Freakonomics radio podcast "10 myths about the us Tax system" agree but also contradict and I'm not sure how to parse through it. I'm just wondering if anyone else has read this book and listened to this episode of the podcast and been able to parse through it? Is one embellishing one side too much or make big assumptions or ignoring some facts? they both seem like they are very intelligent and fairly nonpartisan in their outlook.
I'd love to hear if certain parts of either of these sources resonated with you or are wrong and should be corrected.
link to the book
link to the podcast
Conflicting views for effective tax policy, who should I believe?
byu/TylerT106 inAskEconomics
Posted by TylerT106