Ian Shapiro, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Global Affairs at Yale, examines why the estate tax, paid by only the wealthiest two percent of Americans, was repealed in 2001 with broad bipartisan backing. Part of his DeVane Lecture series course Power and Politics in Today's World, delivered at Yale in fall 2019, the lecture traces the origins of the anti-tax movement, the mechanics of referendum politics, and 1994 as a turning point in American conservatism. Shapiro uses the estate tax repeal as a case study to show how tax cuts became central to the Republican coalition, and how far the political goalposts have moved since. The talk builds toward an account of today's tax politics, connecting a decades-long shift in rhetoric and strategy to the broader anxieties of contemporary American governance. It runs about 77 minutes in a standard lecture hall format.