The “Rich” can’t fund more government spending

I’m going to skip to the end of this Wall Street Journal Editorial and go straight to the ending.  This explains it all:

Eat the Rich? They’re Not Even Filling

The latest billionaire list is peanuts next to what progressives want.

The Editorial BoardApril 10, 2022

Take everything the billionaires own and divvy it up. As of Tuesday the Census Bureau put the U.S. population at 332,601,166. Divide that into $4.7 trillion, and each budding bolshevik would get . . . about $14,000. If that sounds lower than you hoped, it’s because very large numbers are hard for humans to grasp intuitively.

But the math shows why a Scandinavian welfare state can’t be funded by raiding Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and pals. There aren’t enough rich to go around. That’s why Europe soaks the middle class to fund its welfare state. In the U.S. the top statutory tax rate on income kicks in at roughly nine times the average wage, according to the OECD. In Denmark the top rate begins at 1.3 times the average wage, and in Sweden it’s 1.1.

Democrats say they only want to tax the rich, but progressives would be back soon enough for the doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and everyone else.