I would appeal to simple reasoning: everybody has known that the U.S. is on an unsustainable spending curve due to entitlements for the last decade or more. The only thing that changes is how politicians choose to spin it from year to year. If you create a system where politicians get elected promising to spend money that doesn't exist, then such a system will outgrow any amount of revenue you can throw at it. If you somehow changed the rates right now and squeezed enough out of the economy to make it all balance? Ten years from now some new bunch of guys will be running on a platform to provide SUVs in every driveway or something equivalently intellectually sexy and emotionally attractive. It's simply too enticing not to.
But you asked for something solid, so here's the result of some random Googling. Note that it's a little unfair for this author to use the current year's deficit in this calculation, but then again with growth rates where they are it's only a decade or so until such spending will be commonplace even in a frugal environment.
There are about 400 billionaires with a total net worth of around $1.3 Trillion.
Seriously, this entire discussion all boils down to how honest you can be about how the system is broken, not which party is to blame, how much the rich should pay, whether or not we need more or less government, or any of that. All of that nonsense is just bullshit to keep you coming out to vote.
I'd also point you to a graph of total debt as a percentage of GDP. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_debt_chart.html Even if you argue that the last year or two is somehow "special" (A common theme when its your guys spending the money) It's plainly clear that the trajectory leads to default in a very short amount of time.
'everybody has known that the U.S. is on an unsustainable spending curve due to entitlements'
I wouldn't agree with that. I would say that the problem is fighting two un-funded wars coupled with a decrease in revenues caused by the Bush Tax Cuts. Long term we have issues with popular entitlements such as SS and Medicare. But our immediate problems are generally due to the drop in revenues from the Bush era and an massive increase in military spending.
The entire net worth (not income) of all billionaires in the United States may be about $1.3 trillion[1]. Therefore, if you took all of the money currently held from all U.S. billionaires, you would decrease the national debt by about 10%, or cover the deficit for just one year. A high (say, 90%) income tax rate would presumably bring in even less.
Yes. Also note that the super rich, as Buffett points out, make money by investing, not by regular income. The purpose and art of investing is to place money in the best spot. So if you took all the money they had, you'd be a trillion or two ahead, a huge amount of investing would stop, and there would be no more money from them in the pipeline. If, instead of sacking wealth you stuck with income only (perhaps with progressive rates), somebody would simply do the math and put the funds in tax-free bonds or something.
Money, especially money of this scale, works for people. It will find the best spot to stay untouched and continue to work. You don't pay an accounting firm and tax lawyers in the six or seven figures for nothing. In fact, many argue that the way you get rich is to be a better steward of money than the other guy. If you took 100 people, gave them each a million bucks, in a year only one of them would probably have kept it and increased it. Odds are that was the guy who was already rich to start with -- who already had good habits and wise spending strategies.
I mean honestly, there's a wee bit of irrationality in Buffett's position. You don't get wealthy by putting your money in places where it disappears, so why would somebody who was super frugal and managed to plan where each and every penny went leave his money in a spot were it would decrease drastically if he didn't have to? Buffett's going to haggle and fight tooth and nail over some small sub-percentage points on a huge acquisition and then not manage his own money so that it works optimally? Huh?
