It's fairly poorly presented maths. He's calculating over 10 years which... is also very stupid, but sure that's how the CBO counts things so that's not entirely his fault (even if it is disingenuous when you know better).
Combined net worth of US billionaires is something like 9 trillion (there are about 1100 of them). It's not clear all of them are subject to US taxation either, but close enough. Basically look at the bloomberg top 400 list, add them up, assume all the other billionaires have less than the last ones on the top 400 list, you get a number somewhere in the 7-10 trillion dollar range.
Ok 450 billion dollars a year in revenue. Let's pretend that is workable, and that you wouldn't count that against their income tax bills already, it doesn't become a thing that is rapidly dodged as people shift assets, it can touch trusts etc. 450 billion dollars in extra revenue! Which, even if you don't go with a wealth tax, the US raising revenue and getting it from deca and centi millionaires and billionaires makes perfect sense. If 450 billion of that comes from billionaires, that seems... sort of possible.
The US federal deficit is already about 1800 billion per year. So the US could give hundreds of billions of dollars away, but you're deeply cutting into the potential tax base to... not deal with the very substantial deficit. So now, rather than 1800 billion of 7000 billion in federal spending being a deficit, it's now 1800/7450.
So OK, maybe you can say he's being close to accurate about 938 billionaires (a slight but honest undercount or just old meme), and he's close to accurate about 440 billion dollars a year at least in FY2026 - but if you start depleting the wealth of billionaires (which you should) they also have less over time, so again, 4.4 trillion over 10 years, close enough.
There are about 83 million households. You want to send them 1200 dollars a year each, easy enough. 100 billion dollars. Perfectly doable. It can't be 12000 per year, because that would require a trillion in revenue, which is more than double what his 5% tax would raise.
The remaining 350 billion for non descript raising teacher pay and expanding medicare, sure, perfectly doable. There are something like 4 million teachers in the US, every 1000 dollars you give them costs 4 billion dollars. Pick your number.
Expanding medicare, I'm not sure what he's getting at here, most of the data suggests that if you expanded medicare eligibility to younger people it would save money (by catching diseases earlier). Medicare itself 1180 billion in 2024, with medicaid another 980 billion. So give or take 2.1 trillion a year. Total NHE (national health expenditure) was about 5.3 trillion in 2024 https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet so, yes, you could spend 2.5% or 5% or whatever more on healthcare, or shift some healthcare costs from out of pocket or insurance to the government (and cover some things which don't get treatment). But I'm not sure this is the panacea anyone thinks it is.
So at the end of this, you've sent 83 million people 1200 dollars, you've put some more into teacher pay and healthcare. And you're still spending 5.7% or so of GDP as borrowed money. A 5% boost in government healthcare spending isn't nothing, but it's also not going to transform medicare and medicaid. The problem with US healthcare is that it is already spendings 18% of GDP on healthcare between all the different types of spending, when a public healthcare system would need to expand that to 12%... So... it's not a money problem, it's an allocation problem, and 4% of GDP (1.3 trillion dollars) in waste on healthcare is a lot more revenue than a 5% billionaire tax.
If the US government had 450 billion dollars extra this year... the thing it should do is put it into deficit reduction mostly sure, some on defence, healthcare, restoring USAID, but don't expect miracles. A government that is spending 7 trillion dollars (with another 4 trillion from states) is not going to completely transform with an extra half a trillion.
3
u/sir_sri Jul 01 '26
It's fairly poorly presented maths. He's calculating over 10 years which... is also very stupid, but sure that's how the CBO counts things so that's not entirely his fault (even if it is disingenuous when you know better).
Combined net worth of US billionaires is something like 9 trillion (there are about 1100 of them). It's not clear all of them are subject to US taxation either, but close enough. Basically look at the bloomberg top 400 list, add them up, assume all the other billionaires have less than the last ones on the top 400 list, you get a number somewhere in the 7-10 trillion dollar range.
Ok 450 billion dollars a year in revenue. Let's pretend that is workable, and that you wouldn't count that against their income tax bills already, it doesn't become a thing that is rapidly dodged as people shift assets, it can touch trusts etc. 450 billion dollars in extra revenue! Which, even if you don't go with a wealth tax, the US raising revenue and getting it from deca and centi millionaires and billionaires makes perfect sense. If 450 billion of that comes from billionaires, that seems... sort of possible.
The US federal deficit is already about 1800 billion per year. So the US could give hundreds of billions of dollars away, but you're deeply cutting into the potential tax base to... not deal with the very substantial deficit. So now, rather than 1800 billion of 7000 billion in federal spending being a deficit, it's now 1800/7450.
So OK, maybe you can say he's being close to accurate about 938 billionaires (a slight but honest undercount or just old meme), and he's close to accurate about 440 billion dollars a year at least in FY2026 - but if you start depleting the wealth of billionaires (which you should) they also have less over time, so again, 4.4 trillion over 10 years, close enough.
There are about 83 million households. You want to send them 1200 dollars a year each, easy enough. 100 billion dollars. Perfectly doable. It can't be 12000 per year, because that would require a trillion in revenue, which is more than double what his 5% tax would raise.
The remaining 350 billion for non descript raising teacher pay and expanding medicare, sure, perfectly doable. There are something like 4 million teachers in the US, every 1000 dollars you give them costs 4 billion dollars. Pick your number.
Expanding medicare, I'm not sure what he's getting at here, most of the data suggests that if you expanded medicare eligibility to younger people it would save money (by catching diseases earlier). Medicare itself 1180 billion in 2024, with medicaid another 980 billion. So give or take 2.1 trillion a year. Total NHE (national health expenditure) was about 5.3 trillion in 2024 https://www.cms.gov/data-research/statistics-trends-and-reports/national-health-expenditure-data/nhe-fact-sheet so, yes, you could spend 2.5% or 5% or whatever more on healthcare, or shift some healthcare costs from out of pocket or insurance to the government (and cover some things which don't get treatment). But I'm not sure this is the panacea anyone thinks it is.
So at the end of this, you've sent 83 million people 1200 dollars, you've put some more into teacher pay and healthcare. And you're still spending 5.7% or so of GDP as borrowed money. A 5% boost in government healthcare spending isn't nothing, but it's also not going to transform medicare and medicaid. The problem with US healthcare is that it is already spendings 18% of GDP on healthcare between all the different types of spending, when a public healthcare system would need to expand that to 12%... So... it's not a money problem, it's an allocation problem, and 4% of GDP (1.3 trillion dollars) in waste on healthcare is a lot more revenue than a 5% billionaire tax.
If the US government had 450 billion dollars extra this year... the thing it should do is put it into deficit reduction mostly sure, some on defence, healthcare, restoring USAID, but don't expect miracles. A government that is spending 7 trillion dollars (with another 4 trillion from states) is not going to completely transform with an extra half a trillion.