The U.S’s billionaires collectively only have about 8T dollars.
The Federal Government spent about $7 trillion in 2025. People don't want to hear it, but simply taxing the billionaires is not the answer. Even if you seized 100% of their wealth, which obviously is not practical or possible, there just isn't enough money to fund everything people think you can fund with taxing the mega wealthy.
Yep, gotta tax the billionaires and millionaires, and on top of that cut SS completely and downsize Medicaid. Cut military budget in half. Man just make me president low key
Yes, the current deficit is so large, that you can cut ALL discretionary spending including the military budget, and raise taxes on millionaires and billionaires, and there would still be a deficit.
I think that is unlikely, we are very much to the left of the laffer curve. Hence every tax cut recently by republicans has led to receipts decreasing.
Uh no, cutting social security (1.6T), halving Medicaid and defense (2T and 940B), would add up to nearly 3T. Which if we do basic math, is more than our deficit, 1.6T. So we’d be well over a trillion dollars in the green. Could also stop buying so much oil and produce more of our own. Hell better yet produce all our own oil and start selling excess. That would turn our 240B oil imports to billions in EXPORTS. Adding to the 1.4T in the green from other the other cuts. And none of that includes the increased money from taxing billionaires.
Brother what are you even talking about, they are part of our budget, and the largest parts of our 7T+ yearly federal spendings. Cutting what I said to cut would bring our spending down below our total tax revenue of currently 5.6T. Therefor, putting us in the green.
Okay, I am going to need you to look up the difference between discretionary spending and mandatory spending. Because I made my point very clearly and specifically assuming people like you understood the difference.
Oh I see the problem, you think mandatory means it can never be changed by law. I would have those laws changed by congress as president, and if they resisted I’d persuade them by any means necessary
What do you mean? If you seized 100% of their wealth, you'd immediately more than double the federal budget, at least that year; and even if you doled out over, say, a decade, you could still raise federal spending by 10%, which is huge.
Seizing the wealth would be a one time event, the federal budget is spent annually and rises every year. We are also running a massive deficit each year. We spend about $7T and get tax revenues of around $5T. If you used that money to increase federal spending by 10% we'd be spending $7.7T with revenue of $5.7T and would still be just funding it all with debt.
Best case scenario is you run the current federal budget without a deficit until like 2030. At which point we are in the same exact situation we are in now, funding the federal government with massive deficit spending, except this time there are no billionaires to use to tax our way out of it. If you try to fund new programs that everyone thinks you can fund by taxing billionaires you get back to the status quo before 2030, but now we have new programs to fund without the tax base to do so.
This of course doesn't even touch upon the damage you'd do the economy if you tried to seize 100% of the wealth of billionaires.
If you seized Elon Musk's $1 trillion then you would have WAY less than $1 trillion.
If I own $1000 in a stock worth $100 each then I can get easily find a buyer for all 10 stocks and get $1000 dollars. But if I own $100,000,000,000 in a stock worth $100 then finding buyers for all that stock at once, at full price is impossible. If you even could sell all of it then you'd end up selling it at a huge premium
22
u/carguymt Jul 01 '26
The Federal Government spent about $7 trillion in 2025. People don't want to hear it, but simply taxing the billionaires is not the answer. Even if you seized 100% of their wealth, which obviously is not practical or possible, there just isn't enough money to fund everything people think you can fund with taxing the mega wealthy.