How do we go about deciding what an appropriate percentage to make up 50% of AGI is? How much inequality is acceptable?
Without inequality you'd also have to give up Teslas, SpaceX, and all those initiatives Bill Gates is investing in. Keep in mind that something like 37% of Federal Income taxes come from the 1%. Eliminate the 1%, and who is going to make up that money?
Sounds great. I’d rather have Nordic-style social democracy.
I wish we had been smart enough to nationalize our oil and gas industries back in the day as well. I wouldn’t have had to spend so much of my adult life hearing wonks go on about about slashing benefits for the elderly or things like Medicaid block grants.
Nationalizing that industry isn't going to be a bonanza for the government.
Norway and Sweden also have more billionaires per capita than the United States: https://www.insider.com/countries-ranked-by-billionaires-in-...
If by eliminate, you mean equalize the inequality - then the remaining 99% will contribute more as they'll be making more money...
I'm saying hypothetically you can take the top richest people's incomes and redistribute it to everyone. Since everyone else would then have more income, everyone else would be paying more in taxes; counter-balancing the loss in taxes the richest people would no longer be paying.
The federal income wouldn't perfectly balance though, as some of that re-distributed income would be taxed at lower tax brackets. However, the government could always re-adjust the tax brackets as necessary to make it zero-sum.
Anyhow, the broader point is that inequality isn't a requirement when it comes to federal taxes.