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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

You'd tax those making >$10 million/year, not those making <$100k/year.

That’s not going to work. There just aren’t that many people making >$10M per year and there are way too many collecting pensions.

I mean, there aren't many but they hold the substantial fraction of total wealth. So if we have 100 people who can pay an extra billion/year and another 1k people who can pay an extra 100M and another 10k people who can pay an extra 10M then a total of 11k people are suddenly paying $300B.

The currently missing number is 3T and growing. An extra 300B is 1/10 of the needed funds assuming the debt cycle stopped now.

How long so you think you can charge an individual or company an "extra 100M"? Realistically would you stay in a country that suddenly added an extra 100M to your tax bill?

There’s an exit tax if you leave the US and renounce your citizenship, so flight is less of an issue. Have to hand over some of your skeeball tickets before leaving the amusement park.

The number is not 3T/year. It's 3T over 10 years (as most budget short falls are calculated). 300B covers it.

$300B ain’t that much. Age distribution is skewed older, so you might have 60M collecting a pension. Your $300B gives them all a fat $5,000 per year.

And your numbers are wealth, not income.

The average SS payment in the US right now is $1461/month = 17532/year [0]. SS is long term funded (by on going taxes) to about 75%, so $4383/year/person shortfall. $5k/year/person would more than cover THE ENTIRE SS shortfall since I am not arguing for repealing all other taxes, only additional tax on ultra wealthy.

Also, there are ~600 billionaires in the US, most of them however would pay $100M tax (and realistically numbers can be adjusted down by stretching over say 100k highest TC individuals rather than 11k like my original statement).

[0] - https://www.fool.com/retirement/2018/10/28/americans-average...

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