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FEATURED BOOK
The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History
The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, by Vanessa Williamson, shows that throughout US history, the battles most definitive to shaping American democracy have hinged on the issue of taxes.
Williamson contends that fights over taxes have always been about deeper conflicts over who is included in “We the People.” Instead of seeing tax debates as merely economic, Williamson reframes them as deeply political struggles about democracy and equality. The book challenges misconceptions about Americans being inherently anti-tax, showing that many Americans have historically seen paying taxes as part of civic belonging and the democratic process, while opposition to taxes has fomented in relation to disputes over inclusion and civil rights.
Williamson shows that tax fights are really about who has power, how working-class communities have historically pushed for taxation to fund public goods like education, transportation, and a social safety net, while a handful of super-wealthy people have resisted taxation in the interest of maintaining their own power and control. She contends that anti-tax politics have been tied to efforts to repress democracy through voter suppression, gerrymandering, and racial violence. The Price of Democracy ultimately argues that taxes are the public’s most powerful weapon in the fight for a real democracy.
MODERATOR
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Dr. Carmen Rojas is the president and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation. Under her leadership, which started in 2020, MCF launched the prestigious Freedom Scholar award and has granted more than $323 million in funding to dozens of organizations doing the hard work of shifting power to those people who have long been excluded from having it. Prior to MCF, Dr. Rojas was the cofounder and CEO of the Workers Lab, an innovation lab that partners with workers to develop new ideas that help them succeed and flourish.
PANELISTS
K. Sabeel Rahman is a professor of law at Cornell Law School. His academic research focuses on issues of democracy, governance, economic power, political economy paradigms, racial equity, and inequality. He works extensively with a range of think tanks, advocacy organizations, and foundations to develop novel approaches to addressing these issues in practice. From 2021 to 2023, he served in the Biden-Harris administration, where he led the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). At OIRA, he oversaw the policy review and approval of all significant federal regulations and played a lead role in the administration’s efforts on equity, data and information policy, and reforming regulatory analysis. From 2018 to 2021, he served as president of Demos, a national racial justice think tank and advocacy organization that played a key role in combatting voter suppression and developing and mainstreaming major policy ideas from climate justice to student debt relief to energy democracy. He also cofounded the Law and Political Economy Project.
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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 new 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. She has written on school segregation, tax opinion, and tax politics in the Washington Post; about the Tea Party, anti-union legislation, and voter registration at income tax filing in the New York Times; about taxpayer citizenship in the Atlantic; about philanthropy and austerity and white supremacy in Dissent; and about democracy and organizing for Teen Vogue. She has discussed her research on NPR’s Marketplace, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, CNBC’s Squawk Box, and MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show. She received her PhD in social policy from Harvard University.
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