Unjust Taxation

[F]law School Episode 2: Representation = Taxation

Fighting for fair tax policies

Brandon Martinez

September 14, 2024

Summary:

In this episode of [F]law School, hosts Troy Brown and Thy Luong speak with Harvard Law student Brandon Martinez about his article, titled “Representation = Taxation,” on U.S. tax policy.  In their conversation, Martinez explains how, since the post-World War II era, conservative movements have worked to dismantle progressive tax structures, benefiting the wealthy and making tax avoidance common among the ultra-wealthy. He also highlights how racism has shaped tax policy and how those policies deepened systemic racial inequities. There is some good news. For example, Martinez points to growing grassroots efforts at the state level to challenge these disparities, leading to broader engagement in efforts to reform tax systems to hold corporate power accountable and create a more equitable society.

Guest Bio:

Brandon Martinez is a rising third-year law student interested in economic justice, environmental law, and democracy reform. He studied political economy at Harvard College. He is from Orange County, California, where he has worked in local politics, legal aid work, and civic education.

Editors: 

Special thanks to Safowana Islam, Mirei Saneyoshi, and Pragnya Vella for production and editing assistance.

 

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Episode Transcript

 (This transcript was created by an automated process and contains errors.)

Alan Greenspan: Yes. I found a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.

Brandon Martinez: I think it speaks to a broader problem in our economy, our society where we trust rich people can dedicate themselves to our problems more effectively than we can collectively.

Jon Hanson: Hi, everyone. This is Jon Hanson from the Systemic Justice Project and the Flaw magazine at Harvard Law School. In this, the second episode of Law School, hosts Troy Brown and Thy Luong speak with Harvard law student Brandon Martinez about U.S. tax policy. In their conversation, Martinez explains how since the post-World War two era, conservative movements have worked to dismantle progressive tax structures benefiting the wealthy and making tax avoidance common among the ultra-wealthy. He also highlights how racism has shaped tax policy and how those policies deepened systemic racial inequities. There is some good news. Martinez points to growing grassroots efforts at the state level to challenge these disparities, leading to broader engagement in efforts to reform tax systems to hold power accountable and create a more equitable society. Welcome to Floor School, the podcast about the flaws in the law and.

Troy Brown: Welcome to Flaw School, a podcast that explores the flaws in our legal system. We’re today’s hosts, Troy Brown and Thy Luong, and we’re so excited to be hosting for Law School’s second episode.

Thy Luong: Every two weeks, we interview law students to uncover the role of corporate actors in producing many of our most urgent social problems and the troubling tale of corporate actors shaping, bending, capturing, and breaking the law in their favor. In this episode, we’ll be discussing representation and taxation.

Troy Brown: Today, we’re joined by Brandon Martinez, a brilliant three L at Harvard Law School who’s here to talk about his article and the flaw Representation equals taxation. Welcome to the law school, Brandon. Class is in session 

Brandon Martinez: Thanks for having me.

Troy Brown: Brandon you write in your article about how right after World War Two and in the 1950s, the wealthiest were paying a tax rate that exceeded 90% of the highest. But today we’re at a point where the wealthiest Americans actually pay less in taxes than just average, everyday Americans. Can you walk us through how we got to this point and how things changed so dramatically 

Brandon Martinez: Yeah, that’s a big question. And it starts, ironically enough, just about the time when tax rates were the highest. And because conservative actors and a number of people on the far right got involved in mainstreaming a set of theories that today we might consider more normalized. So for one, a common narrative that we hear when people are discussing taxation today is that it’s often placed as an individual burden on people. And one thing that I found through my reporting that was really interesting was that even back in the earliest lawsuits and movements to institute tax repeals, these people were talking about similar things. For example, I found one of the first calls to repeal high income taxation rates and income tax altogether came from this man called AJ Porth. He sued the federal government in 1952 for the fact that he had to withhold corporate payroll taxes, which, if anybody’s familiar with it now, today is what funds SocialS security, health care, the only kinds of things that are earmarked and don’t necessarily go to the things we don’t like. But he argued that that was the equivalent or akin to slavery. It was to him so anathema to his being that he argued the whole amendment granting the federal government the right to issue income taxation was unconstitutional. So these are the states they’re dealing with. And when people understandably threw that argument out of court, other actors became inspired to pursue tactics legislatively to make changes. And over the following 70 years or so now, people have been chipping away at what many economists and scholars deem like the most equitable era of our time. In the United States history at least.

Troy Brown: So when I think about tax policy my eyes kind of glaze over. I understand that it’s important, but I don’t really know anything about it. And my sense is like taxes were higher at one point and then Ronald Reagan enters like a boogeyman and suddenly they’re lower. But who are who are the key players here? What do we need to know about? And and what’s the, what’s the real storyline driving this? I know you write that t here were concerns around the Reagan tax cuts that that cutting taxes would be deemed fiscally irresponsible, which is interesting because today we see conservatives hammered liberals for being fiscally irresponsible. So how have things changed so much, in such a kind of short amount of time?

Brandon Martinez [00:04:59] Yeah. So the key players have, morphed and changed and in name only, you could say I think what was very fascinating from my work, unpacking the history and then interviewing people who are on the ground today trying to advance progressive arguments for taxation, is they’re often talking about different people, but they are consistently mentioning groups and names that have been rolling over funding for several generations.

Brandon Martinez: So I mentioned that AJ Porth was an inspirational actor. He led Congressman Ralph Wynn to propose what’s called the Liberty Amendment, which is a basic repeal of the federal income tax. And then from there, if you looked at the federal government level, you might think that there was static action for some time. But in fact, what was happening was organizers in the South and in states in the were hugely, invigorated by the prospect of coalescing around this specific movement. And they started to sort of mirror each other’s language around why the tax and why taxation in general was wrong. So they argued, for example, that, if people could undo income taxation, then they would have more freedom over their land in  the West–?? large farms or private lands that the federal government was, quote unquote, intruding upon, or that it would grant a general state right. And some of these arguments today don’t sound very racially coded, but if you read back and look in more detail what these people were arguing, they very much understood that the federal government’s power was almost inversely related to their own, and that taxation was the main vehicle by which they accumulated more — the federal government, that is.

Brandon Martinez: And so from there about nine state legislatures had passed the Liberty Amendment by the time a man named Howard Jarvis came around. And this is where, people start to assemble more institutionalized groups. The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is still alive and well to this day in California. And Howard Jarvis, who started again like a fringe figure, argued that a tax revolt led by him could ensure that people’s taxes in California never rose. And sure enough, he was very successful. He passed Prop 13. He led the movement and people adopted it, which, capped property taxes for Californians. And, ensured that going forward, the tax would be regressive. In other words, the tax, because it can never rise without valid approval from the voters, was going to be something that benefited rich people more than poor people. 

Brandon Martinez: And so I think one thing to keep in mind as you read the article is some of these people seem like they pop out of nowhere, or that they sort of amass power, like all of a sudden. But I think even though the names change, it’s it’s important to highlight that they are receiving support and, grassroots or at least, institutionalized power in a way that’s consistent and longstanding.

Thy Luong: You talk a lot about how racism is inextricable from our tax policies in the past, and I’d love to learn more about that. So how has our history of taxation then related to systemic injustice? 

Brandon Martinez: Yeah, it’s a clear through line for me, I think. I was certainly expecting to see arguments in the 1950s and 60s that decried the federal government’s power, because the federal government was primarily working, at least in the domestic front, to stamp out segregation and to increase social programs that primarily benefited people in the middle and lower classes, who were then, as now, the most diverse parts of the country. And and so that was there

Brandon Martinez: I think what was more interesting is that the argument Reagan introduced that said, people who are on welfare or welfare queens, people are probably familiar with that stereotype, are, taking money from, quote unquote, us. And that the federal government needs to take a smaller role in people’s lives. Those arguments mirrored each other and became very intertwined in the ensuing decades. The Tea Party movement, for example, arose 30 years later but was very much tied to movements in the 1980s and the 1990s to place taxation and theft or absence of freedom in people’s minds, and the funders of those movements were very comfortable with the proliferation of those Tea Party movement’s leaders’ and members’ racist statements, frankly.  If you look into the article, you’ll see, quite a few mentions, not only of the welfare queen stereotype, but frequent anti-Semitic conspiracies and ideas of what the poor sort of mean and costs do for our country. People often would refer to the social programs of the 2000s and 2010s derogatively, as only benefitting the poor, marginalized, minority communities that some of these people seem to despise. And on that basis, I mean, I think we should all be concerned if we think that taxation is potentially harmful or, not utilized appropriately, that the people who are primarily weaponizing this language would like taxation to be structured in a way that benefits the wealthy and privileged few. 

Thy Luong: That kind of leads to my next question, which is about corporations and and the narratives that they push. So anti-tax activists really really push this narrative that taxes are a barrier to success, right? That we need to cut taxes to grow the economy. Supply-side economics. Right. So how does the layperson rebut this point? And what can we do to challenge or change these narratives? 

Brandon Martinez: Yeah. It’s. I think it’s very laughable when you get into the details of some of these theories, like how how much change or how much power we’ve given them. One of the main theories undergirding trickle-down economics–which is the idea that when you provide economic benefits, including corporate and individual tax cuts to wealthy people, that the benefits will fuel productivity–comes from Arthur Laffer, who promulgated the The Laffer Curve, an idea that literally puts wealth and trust and power in the hands of wealthy people and little to no agency and everybody else’s. And I think when people say that’s economics, 

I think when people say that’s economics, speaking as a non economist here, I think we need to we need to remember how much people have struggled and fought to redefine the role that the government and the economy plays in their lives. And I. And regard expertise that leads to outcomes or promotes outcomes like that with a little more skepticism. So I think the work that many people are doing these days to promote economic justice in academia and beyond is really fascinating. I really recommend the Deficit Myty by Stephanie Kelton as one example of that work. People who are promoting theories that would allow the government to provide social services to meet the needs of working people and really deserve mention because I think with the resources and the power and capacity of the federal government, we can do most anything and we can surprise ourselves by the way we ramp up our capacity to meet the needs of the working poor. I think we just take for granted that the federal government does not do that and obfuscate the ways that its power so often accumulates and the power of the wealthy instead.

Troy Brown I think this is a really great point, that I want to stick with, and maybe we’ve done a little bit of a disservice by starting the conversation with the the conservative framing and kind of charting the course of conservative tax policy. But anyone invested in involved in progressive politics right now is aware that there are really robust debates happening on the left about tax policy as well. Elizabeth Warren literally made it part of her slogan when she ran for president in 2020. You know, “just 2 cents.” You don’t fall into this trap in the piece that you write you both start and end writing about progressive tax policies  that are really gaining momentum. You start by writing about the wealth tax and Bill Gates’s response to that. Could you talk about what is going on on the left and and how tax policy and thinking about tax policy has been changing? 

Brandon Martinez: Yeah, I want to uplift a couple people who shaped my thinking around this. I was fortunate enough to interview Amber Wallin from the State Revenue Alliance, and to talk a bit with Professor Clint Wallace from the University of South Carolina. They both were interested in proposing tax policies that span the gamut from a wealth tax, which would take unrealized gains,  the base of assets that somebody owns and tax a small portion of those to everything from a mark-to-market tax, which would tax the value of unsold financial assets, stocks and bonds for the amount they appreciate. And then beyond that too to what professor Wallace introduced as a luxury emissions tax, to specifically promote accountability for climate pollution from the highest emitters. So it’s great to see that any and all of these can be additive. I think when I first entered this article, I imagined the story was going to be about how the left is coalescing around one wealth tax. Oftentimes it’s what the loudest and the most prominent, left-leaning actors, thinkers, politicians are doing federally. But I think what’s worth noting from this article is that many people are starting to look at the state and local level as a vehicle for experimenting with tax policy and are recognizing that the conservative movement was very instrumentally effective. For so many years and across so many different arenas because it started at the level of the state. 

In our federalist system, it’s often the the role of the states to experiment and to introduce reforms that the federal government needs to then decide upon. If you track any of these bills and there are amazing ones in California, Illinois, New York, worth watching, and if you see anything in the news about Washington’s new capital gains tax, you’ll start to notice similar patterns. And. I mean, it’s even clear that people are starting to coordinate across states. So I think in the coming years, we’ll see a lot more action bubble up. And the question will be if federal lawmakers are going to be quick enough to the punch to catch that before the conservative movement responds in kind.

Troy Brown: It’s interesting to me that a lot of this change is happening at the state level, because when we think of tax policy, I think we think of like the federal income tax or, you know, or federal tax policy generally. Are states that well positioned to enact sweeping tax changes. I know this is something that that I’m interested in, but I’m a little skeptical of. Right? This was this was a big part of, messaging here in Massachusetts. We recently raised, taxes on people earning more than $1 million a year. And a big point made by the opposition was that people are just going to leave Massachusetts. Is this something that we see in states experimenting with progressive tax changes? How real are these concerns? 

Brandon Martinez:  I think partially they are real, to be frank, because the the practice of capital evasion is happening globally and at such a scale that to move between states in the U.S. for some people that’s that’s a no brainer. After Washington enacted its capital gains increase, Jeff Bezos first complained and then made official his move to Florida. And yeah, he might say there are a lot of reasons for that. But at least some of them I can imagine harken back to the tax, and he made that explicit in his comments. That’s always going to be a problem. Until, you know, as people like Thomas Piketty would argue, we institute some global capital or labor tax that affects everybody. It doesn’t deter people on the right, for example, from trying to operate at multiple levels when they want to abolish the estate tax. At least, you know, they’ve been very effective at that. And have made changes at both stages. So I think for people who are active on the ground, what their response would be is to say that many of the reforms people are interested in will prove at least significantly effective. And then from there policy actors in other arenas will be able to tweak at the margins and see if something else is more effective. 

Thy Luong: So what does that reform look like

Brandon Martinez:: So California has been, active, in proposing a wealth tax, and it would, be a 1.5% rate for assets that are over $1 billion, which is really significant. They also are the first state to propose a worldwide state, estate tax, which would be very significant because as states often regulate taxes that are assets that are only within their borders and that law, if passed, would probably face a series of legal challenges and a conservative federal court circuit. So we would we would need to see how that develops. But there are other proposals like those that are coming from, Illinois and New York that would tax and financial assets, called Mark to market taxes, for the amount that they appreciate and value, and I think whichever ones become legal, it’s probably gonna be a question that, takes a number of years to resolve, but. I think the the fact that people are trying different things is, is neat. 

Thy Luong: Yeah, I really loved that California bill when it came out, but kind of the same rebuttals and opposition came out where people were like, “oh, people are going to move out of California,” and “oh, this isn’t going to work out because it’ll face, you know, challenge in the courts.” Which kind of leads me to a law school related question. But I’m curious, is, is tax reform something you discussed in law school? And then what do you think in terms of the courts, what role did the courts and lawyers play in changing the tax system? 

Brandon Martinez: So as to the first question, I will readily admit that I used corporations and corporate law as a tool to learn about tax law for the first time, which was a joy. I came into law school. I worked in democracy reform spaces for a while, and I saw taxes for some time as one of the outputs that democracies achieve when they’re working well. I’ve come to see it both as an output and as one of the key inputs that shape how much people are able to participate in an accountable, well functioning society. 

I think lawyers can spend their time and do a great job explaining our otherwise archaic rules that they have helped build, so that people feel like all of this is accessible to them and they have the means and clarity of purpose to ask their legislators to make a change. I think oftentimes the key thing I notice about law school is that people are preparing their students to learn about the law as it is, with some amount of discussion, relatively minimal, around why the law came to be and whether it could change or reform itself, if at all. And I think that the next few decades I hope we’ll institute a new purpose or a new call to action for law schools. Because the way of thinking that centered on and teaching people to the test, more or less, on how to be a lawyer in the world today with a very conservative Supreme Court, a legal profession that is facing calls for accountability, and a lack of public trust will certainly necessitate some amount of self-reflection on our part as to how we can be more transparent, how we can be more imaginative, how we can center the needs of the people who have for decades asked our lawmakers to be more responsive to them. 

I think that additionally, lawyers, need to learn how to pass laws as well. We often focus so much on what the courts are doing and what the courts are saying about themselves and about our legislatures. If we took the time to think about what our lawmakers could do to make their bills more effective, then I think we’d be in a much better place to help people as they advocate. 

Troy Brown:I think that’s a really powerful point. As someone who’s in law school right now as well, I think I spend a lot of time thinking about how it’s never been a worse time to be in the law. But I also think there’s never been a better time to become a lawyer. I think the legal profession is really at a crossroads right now, and there are a lot of really exciting, up and coming thinkers that are pushing the profession, that are pushing judges that are pushing everyday lawyers to think about the law differently, to approach the law, in a way that’s not so distanced from first principles. So I think that’s really important to hammer. That’s not a question. That’s just a comment. So, Brandon, you talk about Jeff Bezos moving to Florida as part of a tax avoidance scheme and you write about tax avoidance in your article as well. We know that, you know, Florida in all sorts of ways is one hell of a drug. But what is it doing in this space? How does it facilitate tax avoidance?

Brandon Martinez: Well, Florida isn’t an outlier in how it designs its tax code. It just happens to be utilized more often than many others. Florida allows people to live in the state for six months in a day and to qualify for a number of its tax breaks. So the millionaires and billionaires of this world will be able to dance around and fly between Barcelona’s de la Massachusetts, but ultimately keep their main source of residence in Florida so that all of the revenues that they gain can be passed off with no estate tax and with a much lower marginal income tax rate than many others. And additionally, I think it’s important to highlight that the the tax evasion Jeff Bezos employed here is probably just the most egregious version of unaccountability we’ve seen. There is a very prominent, well known tax evasion strategy among wealth advisers called by borrowed dye, where increasingly the playbook for the ultra wealthy is to deduct as much as they can by maintaining their assets in the forms of stocks and bonds, and then realize capital gains only much later in their life after they have borrowed an inordinate sum of money from banks that are more than happy to loan money to individuals, institutions with whom they deal quite regularly. And this is a large subsidy to high net individuals and corporations that we allow on our dime with little to no federal oversight or regulation. It’s quite remarkable that you can live in one country and perform tax arbitrage the way that millionaires and billionaires have allowed and have sort of seen and capitalized. And obviously, many people will look at that and say, well, they’re the smart ones. They’re the ones who have figured out our tax code. But I mean, that’s that’s cheating class. I mean, they’ve found a way to take what we have allowed through regulations and and. Seized it and worked behind the scenes to make it ever more favorable to them in a society that is supposed to represent everyone. I don’t see how you could ever constitute that as fair.

Troy Brown: To follow up on that and to tie things back to your background in democracy reform, is this really just an instance of rich people having inordinate political influence and then using that to write the rules that benefit themselves?

Brandon Martinez: It’s not just that. I think it’s important to highlight all the ways a select few have accumulated power, have coordinated and consolidated power amongst themselves as a group. But it’s also important to recognize that we have formal institutions that do rely on votes, and we have voted people into power who have consistently supported measures that the lobbyists they know are pushing. And it’s not too hard to trace where the lobbying influence comes from if you’re knowledgeable about it. So I’m a part of the blame at professionals and at liberals who have tracked these problems and have documented them, but have failed to develop a narrative strong enough to reach democratic public in a way that shakes this fog that we’re all in, that thinks, you know, it’s all up to corporations and the wealthy to save us from the tax problems that they’re causing and that the latest round of legislative reforms, if you want to call it that, came through the Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2017. And it cost a total of $1.3 trillion in taxes to the primary corporate entity format. This is what multinational and large national corporations benefit from regularly. And if you look in the immediate three months in which legislators in Congress were debating and analyzing this bill, you could chalk up, I think, a good portion of why it passed to the 20 or so million dollars that the National Association of Realtors were pushing. The $60 million that the Chamber of Commerce is promoting and $72 million that the Business Roundtable was funding. It’s no different than some of the groups I highlight in the 80s getting together, lobbying the Reagan administration. But it’s important to point out who’s doing this because. I think anybody who. Puts the onus of their lobbying efforts behind benefiting themselves and their associates should be viewed with some skepticism when they say they work in the public interest.

Thy Luong: All of this has me thinking about accountability and how we keep players accountable. I thought it was really funny when you wrote about how billionaires are like, what? I don’t want to pay taxes, right? Look, I’ll donate, but they end up just donating to their own foundations and engaging in fully integrated just benefits themselves. So my question is, how did we get to such rampant economic inequality and what do we do to keep these billionaires accountable to close that gap?

Brandon Martinez: Yeah. You’ve highlighted very importantly how much economic inequality has risen in the United States. The top 10% of earners now hold more than double the wealth of the bottom 90%, and the average earnings of someone in the 90 to 90th percentile in 2022 was around 183,000. But the average income of the top 2.1% was around 2.8 million. And it gets even more stark when it comes to wealth. So the problem with philanthropy is that we understandably want to incentivize donations, and we would like people to be able to support social causes and civic principles in their communities. And millions of people engage in philanthropy. And the problem is that it’s we’re aggressively applied in our tax code just to say that the wealthiest people who are engaging in philanthropy benefit much more from their deductions than somebody who is like you or me, just a student. And often people can structure their philanthropic endeavors in such a way that they can promise to give in the future and still deduct that in the present. And that’s just one of the shenanigans that people can get up to. I think it speaks to a broader problem in our economy and our society, where we trust rich people can dedicate themselves to our problems more effectively than we can collectively, and their statements should be taken at face value when they involve their self-interest. Because the groups that various billionaires have formed so that individuals can pledge to donate to their governments and to international organizations have floundered. I mean, the data is seriously so stark that it’s worth mentioning two thirds of the wealth the 400 wealthiest Americans have given less than 5% of their net worth to charity. And. To me. Where we should go really needs to be rooted in that number because the fact that somebody can talk from here to end on about how much they can and will and should donate and doesn’t. Makes sense when you look at federal IRS data and see that nobody is giving willingly to the federal government, at least among this class. Ironically, Donald Trump is the only billionaire at this point who has given a substantial amount of federal taxes. And voluntarily. It’s sickening to me that the individuals who wield so much influence and power in society think that they can tell us repeatedly that they will donate and not hear some pushback in the media or in advocacy circles of our place in society. And I think that speaks in part to the influence they wield in those areas and the power they hold to their companies. I think it also speaks to a narrative that we need to shake and that I hope that forums like this one can help change going forward. 

Thy Luong: Speaking of those narratives and how we change them. I think a lot of people just don’t think about how corporate taxes fund massive social programs all across the US. So what are some of the positive benefits of these corporate taxes that we should be thinking about?

Brandon Martinez: Yeah, corporate taxes, like all taxes, are tools and resources that the government can use to fund all the things we need and use. I think certainly not everyone is going to appreciate all the things that we fund and will find the space to argue that we shouldn’t raise taxes so that we can leave programs underfunded. But I, I think we like most programs. I mean, most Americans do, at least like when it comes to everything from Social Security to our national parks to at the state and local level, things like parks and schools and resources for people who need housing and food. There’s not an area of our life in which the government isn’t involved or doesn’t have a say. And so I put it to people that aren’t the advocates who have shaped my thinking on this issue and have pointed to the question around, well, if that’s the case, then why aren’t we funding those programs to their fullest and applying them to the things that we want? I think this is a problem where more democracy helps and a state of affairs where less democracy will ultimately hurt us. If we choose to defund our governments from federal to state to local, then I think we’ll ultimately see more space for private forces to shape the economy and society in a way that they see fit. And I think for a number of ordinary people that will look increasingly like they have less of a say and like they have increasingly less and less as well, materially. So I would point people to the State Revenue Alliance and to grassroots organizations that today are looking at ways that revenues are deeply intertwined with resources and the things we find in our communities.

Troy Brown: Brandon, you write about how billionaires today like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg seem to be uncomfortable with their wealth, or at least say that they are. And part of that discomfort leads them to philanthropy. And I think this is something that has been present for a long time with the ultra wealthy. We saw, you know, Andrew Carnegie building libraries all across America in order to boost his legacy. How would you compare what the wealthy are doing today with what they did previously?

Brandon Martinez: I think we will potentially see today’s robber barons as the same kind of benevolent, good faith lords of yesteryear. If we give it enough time and we don’t intervene with public policy measures. I think Rockefeller and Carnegie are really good examples here of the type of way that PR firms can intervene. They literally kill people on their plans and not in a way that, yes, today is very real, where like not giving people bathroom breaks and letting them overheat and factories can create real life, long lasting harm and mortality. I mean, they sent Pinkertons to shoot the organizers they didn’t like in the fields. And that, I think, speaks to how much they were able to refashion their image in part because of their donations for sure, in part because of the tax benefits we gave them even then with their philanthropy, but also because they were wrestling with these questions back then. You will see in the article that not only Bill Gates, but Mark Zuckerberg and others publicly think about their role and question whether they even should have $1 billion. And I imagine some of that is sincere. Back then, I mean, the gospel of wealth was a. Sort of a call to arms for the Carnegies and the Rockefellers of the world to be more charitable and to be more benevolent in the public square. And they successfully made that happen. So I don’t know if long term for the kind of redistribution of their image as our modern robber barons . . . 

Thy Luong: We’ve talked a lot about corruption today. Corruption, A legislator not keeping billionaires accountable and all these other horrible things. So what can we as laypeople, as ordinary people do?

Brandon Martinez: Anything but sit down and listen to this podcast. I mean, you’ve got to get up and get active and get involved in an issue that matters to you, because whether it’s the health and safety of our schools and our roads and our neighborhoods, to the basic questions around who should own what in society, you’re going to find a tax implication in there somewhere. You might also find that there are people involved in that space. I think the State Revenue Alliance is a really great organization to track. If you are directly interested in the question of which taxes and which proposals are best fit to meet the needs of our society today. But I also think that if you want to see society evolve to hold corporate actors and the ultra wealthy more accountable, try and find a local group that matters to you or get involved in the groups that you already participate in and share this knowledge that whether it’s a local property tax or it’s anything at the national or international level, there are ways you can participate and give input and there are people who need to hear you say, I would like our resources to be allocated more fairly as well as more efficiently. And I think we need to communicate to our neighbors and our legislators that both these things go hand in hand in the future.

Troy Brown: What a great place to wrap things up. I am ready to go pay my taxes, but more importantly, I’m ready to make others pay theirs too. Brandon, thank you so much for joining us on Flaw School.

Brandon Martinez: Thanks Troy. Thanks Thy.  

Thy Luong: Yes. Thanks to our wonderful editor, Mirei as well. If you’re interested in reading Brandon’s full article, Representation Equals Taxation or learning More about the flaws in our Legal system, check out the Flaw magazine at flaw.org. If you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to do some extra credit and check out the show notes for links we discussed today. Make sure to subscribe to our podcast wherever you listen to your podcast. You can also check out for school.org for more content. Thank you all for listening. Class is dismissed.

Brandon Martinez

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