We Should Be Able to Get the Rich to Pay Off the Federal Deficit But...
Here’s How the Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer
This piece builds on my earlier essay about how America’s shift to deficit-financed wars created our current debt crisis: America’s National Credit Card: How Politicians Discovered “Free” Wars
Democracy has a dirty little secret. On paper, you have the power. One person, one vote—the great equalizer. The working and middle classes have the numbers. By any mathematical logic, they should elect governments that serve their interests every single time.
So why does it feel like we keep losing? Why do the rich get richer while everyone else gets squeezed?
The answer is as simple as it is infuriating: because you are being played.
Here’s how they do it.
1. They Make the Game
Before you have a chance to say anything, they’ve shaped the debate. Through think tanks, media ownership, and PR campaigns, they control the narrative. Gutting regulations that protect you becomes “cutting red tape.” Tax cuts for billionaires become “pro-growth” measures. The rich becoming richer will somehow benefit you with the table scraps they toss—that’s called “trickle-down economics.” Earned Social Security benefits become “entitlements.” Asking them to pay their fair share becomes “communism.”
They don’t just play the game; they make the rules.
2. They Manipulate the Powerful Pieces
You get one vote every few years. They have lobbyists on Capitol Hill every single day. In 2024 alone, federal lobbying spending exceeded $4.4 billion. In addition, campaign donations give them unparalleled influence over the politicians who write the laws. This ensures that their priorities top the agenda while yours stay on the back burner.
3. They Get You (the Pawns) to Support Their Plan
This is the brilliant part. They know they can’t win a fair fight on economics. If elections were about “Should we raise taxes on billionaires to fund healthcare?”—they’d lose in a landslide. There are a hell of a lot more of you than there are of them.
So they don’t let that be the fight. They get you furious about immigration, guns, abortion, transgender athletes, schools, Jeffrey Epstein—wedge issues that cost them nothing but keep you voting against your wallet. You’ll vote for a candidate who wants to gut Social Security because he’s “tough on the border.” You’ll overlook stagnant wages because he’s “pro-life.”
While you’re busy fighting the culture war, they’re quietly winning the class war. You’re worked up about Dr. Seuss books while they preserve the carried interest loophole. You’re mad about bathrooms while pension funds get raided. You’re focused on border caravans while corporations that offshored jobs get tax breaks.
If you want to be poor, work 2 jobs to be poor, and be without healthcare, this is what you should keep doing.
4. And There You Are...the Big Beautiful Bill
The Math They Don’t Want You to Do
Let’s talk about the federal deficit. You hear about it constantly. The debt is unsustainable. Something must be done. Then comes the menu of solutions:
“Cut spending” means gut Social Security and Medicare. “Shared sacrifice” from people who’ve been sacrificing for forty years. “Tax reform” means shift the burden to the middle class. “Grow our way out” means more tax cuts for the wealthy. “Make government smaller” means take away things that you need and help you that they don’t want to pay for. “Trim entitlements” means get rid of things that you are entitled to, because you are.
Here’s what you never hear: “Let’s make the people who have all the money pay off the deficit.”
Why? Because America’s national debt is not a bill the middle class can pay. The math makes it impossible. If ordinary people can’t pay it, the only ones left are the rich—and that’s a conversation they don’t want to hear.
This debt can only be paid by those who ran it up and profited from it—the ultra-rich who dodged WWII-level taxes for fifty years and benefited from every war charged to the national credit card.
How We Got Here: The Credit Card Wars
From the Civil War through World War II, every major conflict came with dramatically higher taxes on the wealthy. WWI: 77% top rate. WWII: 94%. When the country needed to fight, people with money paid for it. The rich hated it. But they paid.
Then came Vietnam. For the first time, America fought a major war without significantly taxing the wealthy. Johnson thought he could have guns and butter on the cheap. He was wrong. By the time everyone figured that out, a new game had been invented: put it on the credit card.
Since then, not one war has come with higher taxes on the wealthy. Reagan slashed taxes while building up the military. Bush cut taxes during two wars. Every president since: fight now, borrow now, let somebody else pay later.
The wealthy gamed the system perfectly. No wartime sacrifice. Just keep wars going, keep tax cuts coming, spread the costs across decades through inflation and debt service.
That’s how you get $37.5 trillion in debt—with interest payments alone now eating up over $1.1 trillion annually. Solving it means returning to the old system: those who benefit most from American power pay for it.
The Math That Doesn’t Work
At current tax rates—especially on extreme wealth—there is no path to fiscal stability. You can’t cut or grow your way out when debt service compounds faster than the economy expands.
So life gets worse. Infrastructure crumbles. Schools decline. Healthcare costs rise. The safety net shreds—not from ideology but because the money isn’t there.
The ultimate irony: the government everyone calls “too big” will cease to function. Not the caricature of big government, but the actual government that does things. Even the military will hollow out. You can’t maintain dominance on a maxed-out credit card.
This is the endgame of fifty years of “free” wars and tax cuts: slow-motion collapse of government function because we’ve systematically starved it of tax revenue.
The wealthy who depend on contract law, infrastructure, educated workers, and military protection of global trade have convinced everyone the problem is government being too big, not tax revenue being too small.
The Precedent That Works
We’ve done this before. When Roosevelt raised the top rate to 94% during WWII, the wealthy predicted catastrophe. They were wrong.
The debt shrank from 119% of GDP to under 40% within a generation. America experienced its greatest economic boom—the post-war prosperity that built the middle class.
The rich squealed. They paid. America thrived.
The periods of highest tax rates—the 1950s and 1960s—coincided with robust growth and declining inequality. Today’s wealthy make the same threats their great-grandfathers made. They warn of capital flight at 50%—forgetting they prospered at 70, 80, 94%. They always resist. They always lie. History proves them wrong every time.
What Has to Happen
Make those who can afford it pay for what they’ve been charging to our collective credit card. Raise taxes significantly on extreme wealth. Close loopholes that let billionaires pay lower rates than teachers. Tie tax rates to debt levels—when debt exceeds thresholds, automatic surtaxes kick in until it falls. End the “shared sacrifice” con that means gutting Social Security while preserving hedge fund tax breaks.
The rich will never volunteer. Rich people didn’t get rich writing checks. There’s a reason they call them “tight wads”—they fight for every dollar, every loophole, every tax break like their lives depend on it. They don’t need to volunteer—they need to be outvoted.
The Bottom Line
The great tragedy of modern democracy isn’t that people are powerless. It’s that their power is so easily given away.
If working and middle-class Americans united around shared economic interests—across racial, religious, and cultural lines—they’d be unstoppable. They could elect governments that tax extreme wealth, strengthen labor rights, make healthcare affordable, and fix infrastructure.
That’s why the culture war is so well-funded. That’s why the message is always “your neighbors are the problem” not “the system is the problem.”
And here’s the kicker: it’s not the “deep state” you need to worry about. It’s the rich who ran up your credit card and expect you to pay for it.
The elite aren’t worried about your vote. They’re counting on you being too angry at the wrong people, too tired, or too confused to use it wisely. They’re betting you’ll keep voting on guns, God, and immigration while they rig the economy.
Looking at the state of things, it’s been a very smart bet.
You have the power. The question is: are you going to keep giving it away?