What does that have to do with taxing the wealthy though? Do you think the $3.5 trillion spent on covid relief has any relationship whatsoever with tax revenue?
Total billionaire net-worth in the USA is $4 trillion so 1 covid relief would fully tap them out. People are horrible at reasoning about large numbers they think these people have real money compared to the government.
Politicians are cheap to bribe with campaign contributions and political adds and that money is enough to ensure the government will do a poor job of serving the people.
It would cost approximately $216 million to do full lead remediation in Flint, Michigan.
That's about 1.1% of the net worth of Jeff Bezos.
I indicate this not to imply that Jeff Bezos should be solely responsible for fixing the Flint water supply, but rather to indicate that the resources are there, the problems are there, and what we lack is the will to move resources to fix public problems (be that via taxation or charity). Even problems we know will carry a larger cost moving forward... Flint is a town with a population of nearly 100,000, and a high-lead environment can basically guarantee higher costs in education, health problem remediation, and possibly crime.
It also points out how little money Bezos really has compared to the cost of running the country. Assuming he could get the current market price for all his Amazon shares (impossible) he could fix 100 decently sized problems in the country and be completely broke after. There are way more than 100 decently sized problem.
