How many times has it happened? You’re on your computer, searching for a particular article, a hard-to-find fact, or a story you vaguely remember, and just when you seem to have discovered the exact right thing, a paywall descends. “$1 for Six Months.” “Save 40% on Year 1.” “Here’s Your Premium Digital Offer.” “Already a subscriber?” Hmm, no.

Now you’re faced with that old dilemma: to pay or not to pay. (Yes, you may face this very dilemma reading this story in The Atlantic.) And it’s not even that simple. It’s a monthly or yearly subscription—“Cancel at any time.” Is this article or story or fact important enough for you to pay?

Or do you tell yourself—as the overwhelming number of people do—that you’ll just keep searching and see if you can find it somewhere else for free?

According to the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, more than 75 percent of America’s leading newspapers, magazines, and journals are behind online paywalls. And how do American news consumers react to that? Almost 80 percent of Americans steer around those paywalls and seek out a free option.

Paywalls create a two-tiered system: credible, fact-based information for people who are willing to pay for it, and murkier, less-reliable information for everyone else. Simply put, paywalls get in the way of informing the public, which is the mission of journalism. And they get in the way of the public being informed, which is the foundation  of democracy. It is a terrible time for the press to be failing at reaching people, during an election in which democracy is on the line. There’s a simple, temporary solution: Publications should suspend their paywalls for all 2024 election coverage and all information that is beneficial to voters. Democracy does not die in darkness—it dies behind paywalls.

The problem is not just that professionally produced news is behind a wall; the problem is that paywalls increase the proportion of free and easily available stories that are actually filled with misinformation and disinformation. Way back in 1995 (think America Online), the UCLA professor Eugene Volokh predicted that the rise of “cheap speech”—free internet content—would not only democratize mass media by allowing new voices, but also increase the proliferation of misinformation and conspiracy theories, which would then destabilize mass media.

Paul Barrett, the deputy director of the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights and one of the premier scholars on mis- and disinformation, told me he knows of no research on the relationship between paywalls and misinformation. “But it stands to reason,” he said, “that if people seeking news are blocked by the paywalls that are increasingly common on serious professional journalism websites, many of those people are going to turn to less reliable sites where they’re more likely to encounter mis- and disinformation.”

In the pre-internet days, information wasn’t free—it just felt that way. Newsstands were everywhere, and you could buy a paper for a quarter. But that paper wasn’t just for you: After you read it at the coffee shop or on the train, you left it there for the next guy. The same was true for magazines. When I was the editor of Time, the publisher estimated that the “pass-along rate” of every issue was 10 to 15—that is, each magazine we sent out was read not only by the subscriber, but by 10 to 15 other people. In 1992, daily newspapers claimed a combined circulation of some 60 million; by 2022, while the nation had grown, that figure had fallen to 21 million. People want information to be free—and instantly available on their phone.

Barrett is aware that news organizations need revenue, and that almost a third of all U.S. newspapers have stopped publishing over the previous two decades. “It’s understandable that traditional news-gathering businesses are desperate for subscription revenue,” he told me, “but they may be inadvertently boosting the fortunes of fake news operations motivated by an appetite for clicks or an ideological agenda—or a combination of the two.”

Digital-news consumers can be divided into three categories: a small, elite group that pays hundreds to thousands of dollars a year for high-end subscriptions; a slightly larger group of people with one to three news subscriptions; and the roughly 80 percent of Americans who will not or cannot pay for information. Some significant percentage of this latter category are what scholars call “passive” news consumers—people who do not seek out information, but wait for it to come to them, whether from their social feeds, from friends, or from a TV in an airport. Putting reliable information behind paywalls increases the likelihood that passive news consumers will receive bad information.

In the short history of social media, the paywall was an early hurdle to getting good information; now there are newer and more perilous problems. The Wall Street Journal instituted a “hard paywall” in 1996. The Financial Times formally launched one in 2002. Other publications experimented with them, including The New York Times, which established its subscription plan and paywall in 2011. In 2000, I was the editor of Time.com, Time magazine’s website, when these experiments were going on. The axiom then was that “must have” publications like The Wall Street Journal could get away with charging for content, while “nice to have” publications like Time could not. Journalists were told that “information wants to be free.” But the truth was simpler: People wanted free information, and we gave it to them. And they got used to it.

Of course, publications need to cover their costs, and journalists need to be paid. Traditionally, publications had three lines of revenue: subscriptions, advertising, and newsstand sales. Newsstand sales have mostly disappeared. The internet should have been a virtual newsstand, but buying individual issues or articles is almost impossible. The failure to institute a frictionless mechanism for micropayments to purchase news was one of the greatest missteps in the early days of the web. Some publications would still be smart to try it.  

I’d argue that paywalls are part of the reason Americans’ trust in media is at an all-time low. Less than a third of Americans in a recent Gallup poll say they have “a fair amount” or a “a great deal” of trust that the news is fair and accurate. A large percentage of these Americans see media as being biased. Well, part of the reason they think media are biased is that most fair, accurate, and unbiased news sits behind a wall. The free stuff needn’t be fair or accurate or unbiased. Disinformationists, conspiracy theorists, and Russian and Chinese troll farms don’t employ fact-checkers and libel lawyers and copy editors.

Part of the problem with the current, free news environment is that the platform companies, which are the largest distributors of free news, have deprioritized news. Meta has long had an uncomfortable relationship with news on Facebook. In the past year, according to CNN, Meta has changed its algorithm in a way that has cost some news outlets 30 to 40 percent of their traffic (and others more). Threads, Meta’s answer to X, is “not going to do anything to encourage” news and politics on the platform, says Adam Mosseri, the executive who oversees it. “My take is, from a platforms’ perspective, any incremental engagement or revenue [news] might drive is not at all worth the scrutiny, negativity (let’s be honest), or integrity risks that come along with them.” The platform companies are not in the news business; they are in the engagement business. News is less engaging than, say, dance shorts or chocolate-chip-cookie recipes—or eye-catching conspiracy theories.

As the platforms have diminished news, they have also weakened their integrity and content-moderation teams, which enforce community standards or terms of service. No major platform permits false advertising, child pornography, hate speech, or speech that leads to violence; the integrity and moderation teams take down such content. A recent paper from Barrett’s team at the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights argues that the greatest tech-related threat in 2024 is not artificial intelligence or foreign election interference, but something more mundane: the retreat from content moderation and the hollowing-out of trust-and-safety units and election-integrity teams. The increase in bad information on the free web puts an even greater burden on fact-based news reporting.

Now AI-created clickbait is also a growing threat. Generative AI’s ability to model, scrape, and even plagiarize real news—and then tailor it to users—is extraordinary. AI clickbait mills, posing as legitimate journalistic organizations, are churning out content that rips off real news and reporting. These plagiarism mills are receiving funding because, well, they’re cheap and profitable. For now, Google’s rankings don’t appear to make a distinction between a news article written by a human being and one written by an AI chatbot. They can, and they should.  

The best way to address these challenges is for newsrooms to remove or suspend their paywalls for stories related to the 2024 election. I am mindful of the irony of putting this plea behind The Atlantic’s own paywall, but that’s exactly where the argument should be made. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably paid to support journalism that you think matters in the world. Don’t you want it to be available to others, too, especially those who would not otherwise get to see it?

Emergencies and natural disasters have long prompted papers to suspend their paywalls. When Hurricane Irene hit the New York metropolitan area in 2011, The New York Times made all storm-related coverage freely available. “We are aware of our obligations to our audience and to the public at large when there is a big story that directly impacts such a large portion of people,” a New York Times editor said at the time. In some ways, this creates a philosophical inconsistency. The paywall says, This content is valuable and you have to pay for it. Suspending the paywall in a crisis says, This content is so valuable that you don’t have to pay for it. Similarly, when the coronavirus hit, The Atlantic made its COVID coverage—and its COVID Tracking Project—freely available to all.

During the pandemic, some publications found that suspending their paywall had an effect they had not anticipated: It increased subscriptions. The Seattle Times, the paper of record in a city that was an early epicenter of coronavirus, put all of its COVID-related content outside the paywall and then saw, according to its senior vice president of marketing, Kati Erwert, “a very significant increase in digital subscriptions”—two to three times its previous daily averages. The Philadelphia Inquirer put its COVID content outside its paywall in the spring of 2020 as a public service. And then, according to the paper’s director of special projects, Evan Benn, it saw a “higher than usual number of digital subscription sign-ups.”

The Tampa Bay Times, The Denver Post, and The St. Paul Pioneer Press, in Minnesota, all experienced similar increases, as did papers operated by the Tribune Publishing Company, including the Chicago Tribune and the Hartford Courant. The new subscribers were readers who appreciated the content and the reporting and wanted to support the paper’s efforts, and to make the coverage free for others to read, too.

Good journalism isn’t cheap, but outlets can find creative ways to pay for their reporting on the election. They can enlist foundations or other sponsors to underwrite their work. They can turn to readers who are willing to subscribe, renew their subscriptions, or make added donations to subsidize important coverage during a crucial election. And they can take advantage of the broader audience that unpaywalled stories can reach, using it to generate more advertising revenue—and even more civic-minded subscribers.

The reason papers suspend their paywall in times of crisis is because they understand that the basic and primary mission of the press is to inform and educate the public. This idea goes back to the country’s Founders. The press was protected by the First Amendment so it could provide the information that voters need in a democracy. “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press,” Thomas Jefferson wrote, “and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Every journalist understands this. There is no story with a larger impact than an election in which the survival of democracy is on the ballot.

I believe it was a mistake to give away journalism for free in the 1990s. Information is not and never has been free. I devoutly believe that news organizations need to survive and figure out a revenue model that allows them to do so. But the most important mission of a news organization is to provide the public with information that allows citizens to make the best decisions in a constitutional democracy. Our government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and that consent is arrived at through the free flow of information—reliable, fact-based information. To that end, news organizations should put their election content in front of their paywall. The Constitution protects the press so that the press can protect constitutional democracy. Now the press must fulfill its end of the bargain.

In 2010, as California was moving forward with plans to raise taxes sharply on million-dollar earners, opponents issued dire warnings that the hike would drive away entrepreneurs and cripple the state economy. “There’s nothing more portable than a millionaire and his money,” warned the ranking Republican on the state Senate’s budget committee. The tax hike passed anyway—and California’s share of the nation’s million-dollar earners actually grew, reaching 18 percent in 2021. (Californians make up just less than 12 percent of the overall population.) And yet, when California recently considered a proposal to impose a wealth tax on mega-rich households, even some Democrats echoed the same old worry.

The idea of millionaire flight is one of America’s most persistent beliefs. Expert consensus holds that “redistributive policies should be undertaken by the most central level of government rather than state or local governments,” as one academic summary puts it. In other words, rich people can’t avoid high federal taxes, short of leaving the country, whereas if a state tries to impose a progressive tax code, its millionaires will decamp for lower-tax jurisdictions. And, indeed, state tax codes, which bring in about one-third of U.S. tax revenue, largely reflect this received wisdom. Unlike the federal system, which is fairly progressive, state and local tax systems on average shift money from poorer households to richer ones. According to a recent report by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, “forty-four states’ tax systems exacerbate income inequality,” with the poorest 20 percent of households paying the highest effective tax rates.  

Things don’t have to be this way. The notion that rich taxpayers will flee if the state comes for their money is mostly fiction. The most obvious clue comes from the existence of the small number of states, including California, New Jersey, Minnesota, and New York, that buck the overall trend by taxing rich people at higher rates. If the conventional wisdom were accurate, you would expect those states to be devoid of wealthy people. Instead, they are among the richest in the country.

[Annie Lowrey: If you soak the rich, will they leave?]

A number of international studies from the past decade further undermine the idea of millionaire flight. In 2011, for example, Spain reintroduced its wealth tax. Crucially, the exact rate varied from place to place within Spain. In Madrid, the rate was zero percent, whereas in other places, it exceeded 3 percent—equivalent, under certain assumptions, to an income tax of more than 60 percent. Skeptics suggested that the measure would cause so much capital flight that it would actually cost the government money. Yet very few households moved to Madrid—hardly an undesirable destination!—in response to the tax, and the government raised $19 in new revenue for every dollar lost to relocations. A study of the Swiss wealth tax, which varies among cantons, found broadly similar results, as did studies of Scandinavian wealth taxes.

In this regard, Europe and America don’t appear to be too different. An analysis of confidential IRS data on earnings and relocations reported that “millionaires are not very mobile and actually have lower migration rates than the general population.” Researchers at the Stanford Graduate School of Business found that, much as in Spain, relocations sapped only about a nickel out of each new dollar in revenues from the 2010 California tax increase.

It makes sense, when you stop to think about it. Wealthy people tend to be more deeply embedded in their community and local institutions than the average person. And when it comes to the ultra-wealthy, we really aren’t talking about people who can do their job over Zoom. Whether it’s a public-company CEO, a private-equity manager, or the owner of the local car dealership, top-level managers and entrepreneurs are usually closely tied to their headquarters and the site of their business’s operations.

Even so, designing an effective, progressive state tax system isn’t as simple as just raising rates on top earners. Wealthy families, especially those whose money comes from investments rather than from a salary, have many ways to slash their tax bill without physically relocating. In a recent paper, David Gamage, Darien Shanske, and I explore the various “money moves” that wealthy households in the U.S. use to delay income until retirement (or death), when they are no longer tied to their business and can redirect their income to a low-tax jurisdiction such as Florida.

The simplest example is what we could call “the Musk.” Build your billion-dollar business in California but never sell any of the stock. If you find yourself in need of funds—say, to buy and destroy a social-media company—you can always borrow against the value of the unsold shares. Don’t sell until you’re somewhere with a lower rate.

What makes the Musk work is what tax wonks call the “realization” rule: the principle that we tax property only when it’s sold. This is supposed to make it easier to know how much the property is worth and to ensure that the taxpayer has cash on hand to pay the bill. For related reasons, the U.S. system has traditionally not treated borrowed funds as taxable income. Combining these two policies gives taxpayers a powerful option: the right to choose not just when but also where to pay taxes.

[Read: The golden age of rich people not paying their taxes]

The federal tax base is mostly safe from these kinds of moves. The United States taxes its citizens’ income no matter where they live. A person who gives up their citizenship is taxed immediately on all of their property, as if they had sold it on the date of their expatriation. This kind of “exit tax” would probably be unconstitutional at the state level, however. Somewhat counterintuitively, then, states’ best answer to money moves is to impose a wealth tax on the extremely wealthy. A well-designed wealth tax could reach any asset a taxpayer owns, whether it’s stowed in an out-of-state pension account or held in a foreign corporation. Another approach would be to modify the realization rule for the wealthiest state taxpayers and to track changes in the value of their property annually; tax mavens call this “mark to market” taxation.

But what if millionaires really do start uprooting their life once the money-move loopholes get closed? As we’ve seen, a wealth tax didn’t cause mass migration in Spain. And Norway’s crackdown on wealth-tax avoidance didn’t lead to any big changes in mobility either, despite anecdotal reports of a few billionaires pulling up stakes. To see why that makes sense, consider Elon Musk again. If California had put a mark-to-market tax in place in time, he would have already paid taxes on his Tesla billions and had little to gain from moving to Texas.

Of course, if a state wants to tax annual value or changes in value, it has to figure out how much things are worth. In our academic work, my co-authors and I explain how to pull that off. For example, states can just wait until taxpayers actually sell, then charge interest. That would also help resolve the discomfort some voters seem to have with taxing assets before they’re sold.

Another objection might be that, even if established business owners don’t move, maybe the next generation of entrepreneurs will tend to prefer states where they can be assured that their lifetime tax burden will be low. There’s no current evidence that this is true. But supposing it were, the best response wouldn’t be to keep our current, broken system. A better compromise would be to lower the official top tax rates but close up the loopholes so that everyone is paying what they’re supposed to. That’s a classic of good tax policy: The more income there is subject to taxation, the lower tax rates need to be.

Whatever the precise solution, state fiscal systems badly need to be repaired. We shouldn’t let the myth of millionaire mobility prevent that from happening.