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Top 5%? There aren’t enough of them. And the top 5% start at ~$150k per household. Not exactly “rich”.

To fund it, you’d probably have to tax the top 50% at a much higher rate.

Total US income is about 9,200T. Top 5% represent about 30% of all income or 3,000T.

Pay every household $24,000 per year is about 3,000T total.

So yeah, you could tax the top 5% at 100% and just barely pay for it.



This seems to be the case in Scandinavia with broad basic health care. In at least one country median earners pay 60% tax IIRC. https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/Progressivity%20...


And that extends to far lower incomes than in the US.

The 40% bracket in the UK starts at ~$60k USD (50k GBP). In the US you’d be in a 22% bracket up to $84k.

Not picking on the UK, just an example.




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