Essential Readings and Info on Progressive Taxes
Books
Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty First Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, Harvard University Press, 2014. Classic global study. All the numbers and data sets that indisputably show how the Crash and Great Recession of 2008-2011 occurred due to the normal workings of capitalism exacerbated by the reduction of taxes and regulations by neoliberalism.
R > G!
Pizzigati, Sam, The Rich Don’t Always Win: The Forgotten Triumph Over Plutocracy that Created the American Middle Class, 1900-1970, Seven Stories Press, 2012. Highly readable account by a veteran labor journalist, who shows that strong unions enabled taxing the rich and corporations at high enough rates to create the most equal America we’ve had before or since.
Saez, Emmanuel and Gabriel Zucman, The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay, W. W. Norton & Co., 2019. One of the authors, Saez, is an architect of the Billionaires Tax. Both teach economics at UC Berkeley, and have collaborated with Thomas Piketty. Wonky, filled with charts, but short (200 pages), engaged with the real world and enlightening, accompanied by a fun interactive website (see below).
Williamson, Vanessa, The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History, Basic Books, 2025. A political history of the United States from colonial times through the present, filtered through the understanding that every consequential issue the nation has faced includes a tax dimension. Taxes are fundamental to democracy, and progressive taxes to an inclusive democracy. You will never think of American history the same way again.
Young, Cristobal, The Myth of Millionaire Tax Flight: How Place Still Matters for the Rich, Stanford University Press, 2018. A short (110 pages) scholarly but brisk book debunking the propaganda question, “Won’t all the rich people move away if we tax them more fairly?” The idea remains at the center of economic blackmail always marshalled against progressive taxes, and the book (and more recent history since it came out) affirms it’s (mostly) a myth.
Articles
Glass, Fred, “How We Won: A Short History of Proposition 30, and its lessons”, November, 2012. The origins of this year’s Education and Health Care Act campaign.
_______, “California’s Proposition 15 Ballot Measure Is About Rolling Back Neoliberalism”, Jacobin, September 2020. Politics behind the split roll tax measure, which barely lost due to the pandemic.
_______, “Prop 15 goes down as big corporations shaft the people of California”, November 2020. A full post-mortem of the campaign.
Pamphlet
Talking Taxes: How to increase state revenue and restore the helping role of government in society, 18 pages. A background paper on progressive tax policy and how to build a movement for fair taxes. It kicked off the Millionaires Tax campaign in 2009 that became Prop 30 in 2012.
Video
Tax the Rich: An animated fairy tale, 2012, 8 minutes. Animation by award-winning labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki, narrated by Ed Asner, written and directed by Fred Glass for CFT. A story about economic inequality, how tax policy got us here, and what to do about it. A discussion starter with a million views that ignited a conservative media firestorm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ZsXrzF8Cc
Extending Prop 30: Not Optional! 2015, 8 minutes. In this California Federation of Teachers-sponsored video we see how deep state budget cuts hurt public education before 2012, and examples of how Prop 30 funding brought back laid off teachers, other school staff, and helped students who needed help the most to gain access to improved educational opportunities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBT9lWu-UIY&t=76s
What is Prop 15? 2020, 4 minutes. Animated DSA explainer video for the 2020 split roll ballot measure. Even official campaign staffers said this was the best thing like it for the campaign. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTtFN0drXd4
Why I Support the California Billionaire Tax, 2026, 3 minutes. Robert Reich and Inequality Media provide a quick overview of the Billionaires Tax and why it is needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUcgiqsU6NQ
Websites
Tax Justice Now https://taxjusticenow.org. An interactive website that accompanied the publication of Saez and Zucman’s The Triumph of Injustice (see above). Demonstrates how taxes can change with different assumptions and inputs.
Billionaire Tax Now, https://billionairetaxnow.org. Official UHW-sponsored campaign website.
Education and Health Care Act of 2026, https://www.protectingca.com. Official CTA- and CFT-sponsored campaign website.
Inequality.org https://inequality.org. Institute for Policy Studies-sponsored site focusing on what can be done to narrow the staggering economic inequality that so afflicts us in almost every aspect of our lives.