What's Left 3: What if We Had $4.5 Trillion a Year To Spend on Ordinary People?

Ted Rall on Feb 16, 2024

Leaving the tax structure as it is, at least $3.5 trillion per year is currently being wasted, squandered, thrown away for no good reason whatsoever. Meanwhile, Americans live in terror because they are one or two paychecks away from economic ruin, don't know what they would do if they were diagnosed with a terrible disease and are going into insane amounts of debt in order to send their kids to college.

Now imagine if large corporations and wealthy individuals were made to pay their fair share of taxes. Six out of 10 voters say they resent how low taxes are for the rich and big companies.

Currently, for example, families don't pay Social Security withholding taxes on income over $250,000 per year. Eliminating the highly regressive cap would bring in an additional $100 billion per year.

A 2% or 3% wealth tax on people worth more than $50 million -- a tax on assets rather than income, as other developed countries have -- would bring in at least $200 billion annually.

Taxing capital gains at the same rate as income would bring in an additional estimated $100 billion a year.

Corporate income taxes as a percentage of GDP have steadily fallen since 1950, peaking at 6% during the Korean War, hitting 3% in 1970 and plunging to 1% during the Reagan years, where they are now. Companies are sponging off the greatest consumer market on earth; they should be made to pay if they want to continue to play. If we returned to that 3% rate, when the economy was booming by the way, the Treasury would bring in an additional $500 billion annually.

All told, we are looking at roughly $4.5 trillion per year -- $4.5 trillion a year that could be used to alleviate hunger, house the unhoused, treat the sick, build infrastructure, educate the young and retrain older workers.

Next week: Americans' biggest worries and how the Left could reallocate those $4.5 trillion in ways to make us all better off.

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Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, co-hosts the left-vs-right DMZ America podcast with fellow cartoonist Scott Stantis. You can support Ted's hard-hitting political cartoons and columns and see his work first by sponsoring his work on Patreon.