Source: Washington Post
by Megan McArdle
“The problem with government spending is that you have to pay for it. New programs often poll well when you tell people about the benefits. Mention raising taxes, however, and it’s a whole different story. But what if you didn’t have to tax reluctant voters to fund your big ideas? I mean, Elon Musk is sitting on somewhere north of $670 billion. If the government took just 5 percent of that, it would have almost $34 billion to spend on health care and child care and green energy, right? And there are almost a thousand other billionaires in the country, so pass that wealth tax and warm up the money cannons! If only it were so easy. … wealth taxes have been tried over and over, and most countries that adopted them eventually abandoned the idea, finding that such taxes were difficult to administer, caused capital flight and raised little revenue.” (03/08/26)