You'd have to crank the taxes up on the only people who'd have nearly all the money at that point to make it work: the rich.
If you believe this then you must also, by default, believe that all forms of insurance (private or otherwise) are invalid too.
When I buy house insurance, I'm paying a premium based on the chances of something bad happening to my house during a current year. The money for claims may be pooled, but that initial premium is based on the risks for my house only. Therefore I don't link other forms of insurance with SS. The biggest screw up with SS is our own government. The original system was set up using an average life expectancy that was far less than it currently is. They didn't change the system as our life expectancy has grown. Therefore they are paying out WAY more than the system was ever designed for.
The problem with getting higher taxes from the "rich" is two fold - -
1) Until the rich actually sell property or stocks there isn't anything to tax. Yes, they do have a higher proportion of the worlds 'wealth' than is good for anyone.. even themselves. But owning $20 million in paintings isn't something the government can tax. And even when they can tax it, it's only on the difference between what they bought it for and what they sell it for, not the total amount. Also, it's during stock market rises that the rich grow richer and more taxes can be taken from them. During downturns in the economy, the rich are able to avoid much of their taxes by selling stocks below what they bought them for to offset other gains. Getting money out of the rich isn't as easy as just setting some 'tax rate' and being done with it. The trick is figuring out WHAT you're going to tax and how.... and doing it without them passing that cost onto everyone else.
2) We need to define what "rich" means. Is 'rich' someone with a 200 employee company worth $30 million whenever he sells it and retires? Or, is rich someone who has $30 million in stocks and is getting $1.5 million in investment income every year off of it? Once we actually determine what rich is (and it's not just the "1%" as it only takes $135K/year to be a 1%er if you're 31 years old), then we can decide what types of income / wealth actually qualifies you as being rich and how we're going to tax it... again without them just passing that tax off on everyone else.
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