While I generally agree with krugman, he and other on the left need to be more honest about what funding our (very modest) social safety net will cost.

The idea that a the billionaires could easily pay this is just wrong. You could take the wealth of all US billionaires and it fund government for less then a year.

They should pay more, but for fairness, it won’t fix the budget. For that the middle class needs to pay more. They pay less then they have in modern history, and less then other places.