EDITORIAL: Why the Democratic Socialists of America’s ‘Tax the Rich’ won’t work

Las Vegas Review-Journal August 22, 2026 - 9:00 pm British historiographer Paul Johnson erstwhile noted that those successful Mahatma Gandhi’s entourage utilized to quip that “it costs a batch of wealth to support Gandhi successful poverty.” It will likewise outgo a batch of wealth to support each of the young antiauthoritarian socialists rolling successful “free stuff.” With that in mind, Adam N. Michel of the Cato Institute has provided a useful work by examining a database of the proposals advocated by the socialists who have recently become the dependable wing of the Democratic Party. This includes providing health care, housing, college, energy, family leave and child care at no cost for most Americans. In addition, Mr. Michel explains, the socialists want jobs guaranteed by the government, fossil fuels eliminated and reparations paid to Black Americans. This can be accomplished, the Democratic Socialists of America platform explains, by taxing the “richest individuals and corporations.” Yet it appears their economic literacy deficiencies also betray their mathematical prowess. “Totaling up 9 of the largest proposals successful the DSA level would mean caller national spending equivalent to betwixt 18 percent and 53 percent of GDP,” Mr. Michel calculates. He concludes that the full outgo of each this “free” worldly “ballparks betwixt $71 trillion and $212 trillion successful caller spending implicit the adjacent decade.” Keep in mind that, since the pandemic, the federal government blows through about $7 trillion each fiscal year while running deficits that typically scope $2 trillion annually. Mr. Michel acknowledges that the workout is “inherently imperfect” and costs can alter wildly. Estimates “likely overstate the outgo wherever programs overlap with each different or existing spending,” he wrote this period “They understate the outgo by failing to afloat seizure behavioral responses, broader economic effects and the broad scope contemplated by the DSA.” But either way, the DSA agenda would necessitate a massive government involvement in the U.S. economy. Using Mr. Michel’s low-end estimates would entail raising national spending from 40 percent to 57 percent of gross domestic product. Using the high-end projections would require government spending to reach 92 percent of GDP. “No comparable state on Earth spends anywhere near that amount,” Mr. Michel notes. “The DSA agenda’s spending could give the government a claim on national output much closer to estimates of government power under Soviet-style communism than to today’s European welfare states.” The thought that taxing the affluent will be able to accomplish all this is balderdash. The 400 wealthiest Americans were worth $6.6 trillion in 2025, according to Forbes. Confiscating the entirety of their assets wouldn’t fund even a year of current national spending, let alone the blowout the DSA envisions. Even throwing in all corporate profits over the next ten years would pay for only half of the low-end estimate of the agenda, Mr. Michel reports — never mind how that would crater the economy, making the federation and most of its citizens poorer in the process. That leaves everyone else — particularly the middle class — holding the bill. It will, after all, take a lot of your wealth to pay for all that “free” stuff.