Taxing the Rich at 100 Percent Won't Come Close to Paying for Socialist Agenda, Study Finds

Taxing high earners at 100 percent of their income would pay for about one third to just over half of the extraordinarily ambitious "progressive" or socialist programs supported by democratic socialists Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a new Heritage Foundation study found. Even a full confiscation of all incomes above $200,000 and a confiscation of all corporate profits would still fall $13.2 TRILLION short of paying for the low estimate for Medicare for All and the Green New Deal.

"It is arithmetically impossible to pay for progressive promises by 'taxing the rich,'" David Burton, Heritage's senior fellow in economic policy, wrote in the study. "Progressive promises are too expensive—and the amount of income earned by the rich is too small. Even using lower cost estimates, confiscating every dollar earned by every taxpayer with incomes of $200,000 or more would only pay for about half of the progressive agenda."

Yet even this estimate is rosy. That figure "is based on the false assumption that people would continue to work, save, and invest when subject to a 100 percent flat tax. The reality is that progressive promises can only be funded by increasing taxes on the middle class from three to 10 times their current level or, for a limited time, by dramatic and unsustainable increases in federal borrowing."

To analyze whether or not taxing the rich could cover the socialist agenda, Heritage first estimated just how much that agenda would cost.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), without any change to current law, America will spend $57 trillion in the next ten years (about 22 percent, or $12.4 trillion, will be financed by debt). Single-payer health insurance would increase federal spending by $32 trillion to $33 trillion over the next ten years. The Green New Deal, jobs guarantees or a universal basic income, government-funded college tuition, and more would cost trillions more. Heritage estimated a ten-year total cost between $48 trillion (close to the PJ Media 

analysis of $49.109 trillion over ten years) and $92 trillion (close to the American Action Forum estimate of $93 trillion) for all programs.  Medicare for All would increase federal spending by 58 percent. The low estimate for the Green New Deal suite of socialist programs would increase that spending by 84 percent — the high estimate by 161 percent.https://pjmedia.com/trending/taxing-the-rich-at-100-percent-wont-come-close-to-paying-for-socialist-agenda-study-finds/