Or, yes Virginia, America can solve its budget problems soaking the rich [*]:
Medicare doesn’t require “tens of trillions,†unless your budget horizon is something like twenty years. This year, Medicare will cost $572 billion. In 2020, according to the CBO, it will cost $949 billion. Over the next ten years, it will cost $7.6 trillion, which isn’t even a ten of trillion, much less “tens of trillions.†(And that doesn’t include “offsetting receiptsâ€â€”$80 billion this year, and $1.2 trillion over the next ten, which reduce those outlays significantly. Supporting spreadsheet is here.) Right now, the top 1% of the U.S. pop has something like $1.4 trillion in income. The next 4%, $1.3 trillion. The next 5% has almost a trillion. (Computed from Piketty and Saez data here.) In other words, you could entirely fund Medicare by hitting up the top 1% for about a third of its income. Yeah, I know that’s politically impossible, but they’ve got the money—we just can’t have any of it.
[*] Up to a point.