Billionaires Must Pay Their Fair Share
How much is that?
People who want to force billionaires to pay their fair share have no idea of the magnitude of the problems we face. For example, a friend said, “If I was a billionaire, there wouldn’t be any starving children in the world.” That’s a nice sentiment.
According to Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, “In 2022, 148 million children had stunted growth and 45 million children under the age of 5 were affected by wasting.” What if a billionaire targeted just the children under the age of 5 affected by wasting? That would be 45 million children. Divide $1 billion by 45 million and you get $22. If you could properly feed a child for a dollar a day, you could feed all the children under 5 for 22 days. Then what? Plus, that still leaves 148 million children with stunted growth and no benefit at all.
What about our national economy? According to the U.S. Treasury, in 2024 we took in $4.92 trillion in revenue. We spent $6.75 trillion. The difference is the deficit. Although the difference is only $1.983 trillion, according to the General Accountability Office (GAO) the debt went up $2.3 trillion from 2023. The federal debt on September 30, 2024 was $35.5 trillion. The net interest we paid in 2024 was $1.1265 trillion.
How can we get the billionaires to pay their fair share and eliminate the deficits? Some advocate a wealth tax instead of or in addition to increasing income taxes. What if we just stripped every billionaire of all of their wealth? According to Inequality.org, the total wealth of all 801 billionaires in U.S. as of September 14, 2024, was $6.22 trillion. If we could magically manage to take all of that wealth without having it devalued, we couldn’t pay the interest on the debt for six years. That is without changing anything. Clearly billionaires can’t pay enough to get us out of the hole we have created.
Some will want to argue about it and claim it is all the Democrats’ fault, or it is all the Republicans’ fault. We could go into that, but it doesn’t change where we are. We have to face the facts. No matter how we got here, we cannot continue what we are doing.
Think about one more idea. Who is benefiting by getting interest payments on the national debt? People, businesses, governments, and agencies who buy government securities. In other words, those with money to invest. The rich get richer.
Your ideas are welcome.