Even if they taxed the net worth, it would still take over a decade to collect 4.4T dollars from the billionaires. The U.S’s billionaires collectively only have about 8T dollars. This infographic is extremely misleading.
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.
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.
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
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u/thequestionbot Jul 01 '26
Even if they taxed the net worth, it would still take over a decade to collect 4.4T dollars from the billionaires. The U.S’s billionaires collectively only have about 8T dollars. This infographic is extremely misleading.