What's wrong with taxing the rich to maintain current spending?
It is a similar issue with taxing nominal wealth. 2/3 of nominal wealth in the US is completely non-liquid. Taxing the liquid fraction is essentially leveraged as a result, causing a catastrophic collapse in the value of similar investments by ordinary people as a side effect. Impoverishing a large portion of the middle class to own the rich isn’t a recipe for political success.
At some point they'll need to do austerity.
On Baby Boomers with paid-off houses: it's admirable that you were responsible, worked hard, bought your house in the 80s or 90s, and paid it off. However, you made that deal when there were 100 million fewer people in this country. That population growth is part of what kept those house payments affordable for you over that period. We are now in a housing crisis; there are not enough rooms to go around. Many houses are underutilized, including yours. From a strictly utilitarian standpoint, the solution would be to increase taxes to reflect the real societal cost of your residence existing as it does; it would be your decision whether to pay the tax, subdivide the house to increase utilization, or sell. This is a form of austerity.
For the yuppies: 99% of the world can make due on less than half your income, in the same city you live in. Your costs are high because your tastes are expensive. A high tax would not ruin you. It would force you to make decisions, some of which might be difficult. Public school instead of private. A cheaper car, and fewer cars. Better-controlled discretionary spending on things such as entertainment, clothing, food. Full-throated support for single-payer healthcare. Your kid will still get a good education, because you are an involved parent. You will still be able to get where you need to, because you will have a working vehicle. You will be more intentional about how you enrich your lift. You will reap the benefits of dismantling America's broken healthcare system and replacing it with something at least as good as what the rest of the developed world can boast. This is also a form of austerity.
You do not solve this problem simply my making poor people's lives harder.
After that, the money is gone.
The underlying problem of high, persistent government spending remains. This isn’t primarily a “tax the rich” problem.
It also does help to reign in some spending. Because a lot of spending is indirectly performed through subsidies. Oftentimes in the modern day for the rich who can already afford such initiatives.
> What's wrong with taxing the rich to maintain current spending?
Perhaps you have something more sensible in mind, but much of this pressure is clearly coming from the perspective that we could have incredible government spending with no tradeoffs or inflation if only we summoned the political will to fight billionaires.