Every meme that I respond to on my blog was reposted by someone I know in the real world, someone I’ve had conversations with, someone I can personally attest is smart, thoughtful, and caring. That is how I know that there are smart, thoughtful, caring people out there who see these memes and think to themselves, “Yes, that’s a good idea.”
And to any such person who I can possibly reach, I beg you to ask yourself this question: Why would giving the government more money make them better at spending money?
If my math is correct, $30 billion a year could eradicate world hunger. $324 billion would halt climate change. According to foreignassistance.gov, the US government spends over $70 billion per year on foreign assistance. The Inflation Reduction Act specifically allocates $362 billion to fight climate change. If your goal is to solve those problems, and these are your solutions, why hasn’t it worked and why will it work next time?
Or, just ask yourself honestly, are you trying to solve these problems or do you just want Musk, Gates, Bezos, and Zuckerberg to have less money?
So it would cost $135 billion to end homelessness, provide free public college, universal childcare, and replace all lead pipes. The US government spent $6.1 trillion in 2023, $6.5 trillion in 2022, and $6.8 trillion in 2021. If all it takes is one investment of $135 billion to solve all those problems, how have we spent 140x that amount and managed to solve none of them?
This is my favorite.
The total wealth held by US billionaires and millionaires combined comes to $32 trillion. Approximately 1 in every 15 Americans falls into that category, and if you take families into account, it’s 1 in every 5 households. If you take every penny from every one of those households, every house, every farm, every car, every painting, every rug, every TV, every computer, if you liquidated the entire New York Stock Exchange at current market rate and added it all together into one ball of cash, it would be $32 trillion.
If you seize all the wealth from the richest 20% and put every penny toward paying off the debt, we would still be $4 trillion in debt.
The government does not have a revenue problem. The government has a spending problem.
So tell me again how you think that giving the US federal government more of Musk, Gates, Bezos, and Zuckerberg’s money will solve all of your problems.
