If everyone in the US donated 100,000 that would raise 34.2 Trillion.
That’s a nice dent.
If we took all of the wealth from the top 10 billionaires it would equal about 2.5 Trillion.
The combined wealth of the 1%, however, is about 52 trillion.
So, we could pay off most of the national debt by instantly burdening everyone with a one time $100,000 tax bill. If you can’t afford it you have to make loan payments on it.
OR we could confiscate all of the wealth of the top 1%, pay off the debt, and have plenty left over to let the 1% keep some wealth and maybe fund some other things.
None of these options are practical obviously, but it does imply that the top 1% could easily afford wealth taxes of some kind and it would help pay down the national debt and that the non 1% could not do anything other than take on fractional ownership of the debt directly.
This shows one group can afford it, another group definitely cannot.
We probably need to start electing people exclusively from the bottom 99% of wealth holders, or better yet the bottom 50%. Ideally it should be illegal to be allowed to run the government if your net worth or the net worth of your family puts you at all in the top percentiles of wealth.
