“The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History,” Vanessa Williamson, Brookings Institution

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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 Williamson is a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings, and a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. She studies taxation and democracy in America. Her forthcoming book, The Price of Democracy, reveals the revolutionary power of taxation in American history (Basic Books, November 2025). She is also the author of Read My Lips: Why Americans Are Proud to Pay Taxes, and with Harvard professor Theda Skocpol, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism.

This event is sponsored by the American Political Economy eXchange (APEX) program at ISPS.