I know there is no chance in hell anything like this could ever pass, but work with me for a second.
What if instead of talking around the clock about our national deficit crisis, our political institutions and chattering classes spent time thinking about the real underlying problem in our economy today -- namely that for the last 30 years, our economic policies have crippled the middle class while rewarding the richest 1% with nearly all the benefit of the economic growth our country has seen over these last decades?
Well, one place you might start such a conversation would be to look at how we might as a nation invest the money the super wealthy have been hording these many years.
I'm not talking about redistributing wealth. I'm not talking about welfare or handouts or taking from the rich to give to the poor.
I'm talking about setting a big national goal -- let's say to have a completely carbon-free energy economy by 2050 -- and applying the resources necessary to meet it.
I'm not talking about investing billions or tens of billions or even hundreds of billions. I'm talking trillions of dollars in investments over the next 4 decades.
You could, if we thought big about it, pay for this program with a 10-year annual wealth tax of 10% on the wealthiest 1% of all Americans. You could even create tax brackets within the wealthiest 1% such that the wealthiest 0.1% of all Americans paid slightly more and the wealthiest 0.01% even more, and so on.
How would these wealthy people be able to afford the tax? Trust me, given the rate at which they have been accumulating wealth, they would hardly notice it. Their portfolios go up and down by the millions and tens of millions and even billions every couple of weeks.
Take the richest 400 people in America, for example -- the top 0.000129%. These folks have actually seen their wealth increase over the last several years while the rest of us have been suffering during this great economic crisis -- and now these fortunate few have a combined net worth of $1.57 trillion!
Sure, a 30% wealth tax on just these 400 people -- for the sake of argument -- would be a significant dent in their net worth. But it would net the country about $500 billion.
Dump that into a national smart grid system and you would simultaneously put hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans to work, save consumers tens of billions of dollars in energy costs, reduce health threats air pollution from coal fired power plants, revitalize important sectors in our construction and manufacturing sectors, and take one giant leap toward a carbon-free energy economy.
Not only that, but these wealthy investors would likely be well-positioned in the market to take advantage of the investment opportunities such economic activity would generate and could easily earn back much if not all of their "donated" wealth.
It would be building wealth the old fashioned way, from the middle class up, and would have the added benefit of finally countering the tired and thoroughly discredited theory of trickle down economics.
Best of all, such a plan would not benefit one class of Americans or this group or that. It would benefit the nation as a whole and put us far ahead of the rest of the world in the race for the clean energy economy of the 21st century.
Of course, it is nearly impossible to think that our broken political institutions would ever consider such a proposal or anything like it anytime soon. Yeah, it's a crazy idea. But, it would help get America going again and and it would change our national conversation. Instead of asking how do we cut, the question would be how do we grow.