In 2019 the US federal budget is $4.407 trillion. [1]
The combined wealth of America's top 400 billionaires in 2017 was 2.7 trillion.
If the social democrats got their dream and took all of their money we could fund the government for only about seven months. When will D.C. and the American people realize that tax rates aren't the problem?! It's the spending stupid!
Edit: Yep, keep downvoting facts people. That will surely save us.
Pointing out how high the base-line level of incompetence of the government seems ineffective.
I think the line of reasoning is something like this:
> "The rich" are bad, we need the government to save us from them. The government is underfunded, so when it takes money from the rich, it'll be funded enough to become competent.
The federal debt is $20 trillion. The 400 billionaires and their 2.7 trillion is about 15% of the debt we're in.
Why does the government always get a free pass in... everything?
>I think the line of reasoning is something like this: "The rich" are bad, we need the government to save us from them.
Isn't the argument that extreme wealth disparity is bad, and that government is one of the best and/or only vectors for affecting societal problems on such a massive scale? Your version sounds mangled on purpose to make half of the people in the discussion look bad.
Bottom up does not have enough direct power. Billionaires won't banish themselves.
The problem of government is that many members are rich to filthy rich themselves.
Legislation is government too.
About the only other force that could enact it is a widely accepted religion and there is none anymore.
I think spending is an important part of the equation, but calling a broad audience stupid and then asserting that their negative reaction is because they can't accept facts is textbook unconstructive behavior.
Yeah, arbitrary cutoffs make me question things in statistical analysis. This isn't much different.
Why 400? Why Billionaires?
And think about it, with the wealth of 400 people a 331,194,000 person country's gov't programs, including a massive defense program, can be paid for for 7 months! That's a long time for .00012% of the population. The numbers are so big that the human brain just casually slides the scale logarithmically to ignore the sheer magnitude of wealth those 400 people hold!
Are you aware this would be just a one time 7 months ? The following years (decades) nothing. Or problably even a small negative impact (because those 400 will then for sure pay no taxes and do no charities).
Yes I understand that. Plundering the wealth of the rich is a terrible idea. It's a classic straw man:
Theory: We should tax the rich.
Straw-man: If we took the 400 richest people it would only fund the gov't for 7 months!
Accept Fallacy: Oh, then taxing the rich won't work!
Reject Fallacy: Ok, but there are more than 400 rich people, and no one is saying abolish taxes on everyone else. So perhaps there is a better balance, where those with incomes a certain multiple of local medians pay a higher progressive tax rate.
What I pointed out above was just the weird cutoff of 400 to arrive at 7 months. Why not a base 10? 100,1000,10000 richest. Or something like "The richest 674 people in America could fund it for 1 year" (made up numbers). When an arbitrary number is selected, I just get skeptical. Especially when it anchors to nothing else. What metric/group/club is there that top 400 American billionaires make up. Why do I care about 7 months?
I think the line of reasoning is something like this:
> "The rich" are bad, we need the government to save us from them. The government is underfunded, so when it takes money from the rich, it'll be funded enough to become competent.
The federal debt is $20 trillion. The 400 billionaires and their 2.7 trillion is about 15% of the debt we're in.
Why does the government always get a free pass in... everything?