Where the Money Is

Here is a bit from a post by Paul Krugman on his blog where he thinks about the choice between taxing the ultra-rich and cutting Medicare eligibility. Guess where you find the bigger pot of money:

So, what we learn from IRS data is that in 2007, before the Great Recession depressed everyone’s income, the top 0.1% had around $1 trillion in taxable income. Now, even confiscating that whole sum wouldn’t eliminate our current deficit, especially since the top 0.1% already paid something like a third of that total in taxes. But then, no single action would close our current budget gap — not even the complete elimination of Social Security or Medicare.

What you want to ask is how much higher taxes on the super-elite might contribute to deficit reduction, as compared with the kinds of things politicians are actually proposing.

So let’s suppose that it was possible to collect an additional 10 percent of that super-elite’s income in taxes, to the tune of $100 billion a year. How would this stack up against the kinds of things on the table right now?

Well, consider the idea of raising the Medicare eligibility age — a move that would create vast hardship. According to the Congressional Budget Office (big pdf), when fully phased in this would save … $42 billion a year.

I could multiply comparisons, but the point is that higher taxes on the very rich could make a significant contribution to deficit reduction. They couldn’t eliminate the deficit on their own, but what could? There’s real money up there, and those making it should be bearing a share of the burden.

The political right says "no new taxes" but are quite happy with cutting Medicare eligibility. The political left is happy with raising the taxes on the ultra-rich but want to keep the health care benefits for the poor.

So who will win this battle? I hope that the left wins. But my cynical side says that the rich have so corrupted politics in the US that the political right will win.