>>84
Sorry, some poor math.
- US billionaires - 5 - $171.2B
- US millionaires - 2,886,000 -
$2,886,200B (assumption: $100m net worth; also, many people in this group are retirees, sports, entertainment, politicians)
- US "the rich" (notwithstanding the above) - 20% @ $125k per - $7,750B
That would be a redistribution of a single $9.336 million check to every US citizen (or $16.380 million as per Beeghley's figures). Admittedly, that is much better than my previous numbers and almost makes me say the tactic actually looks good now. BUT--and it's a big "but"--that leaves a lot of the complications that would ensue because of the change, including the aforementioned disruption to both private and public services, and that it would only work this way once. There's also the problem of the inflation offset this kind of sudden redistribution of finances would cause (that would be a problem regardless of socialism or capitalism trends; it's a problem of "stuff" in general), possibly even rendering the single check pointless and, next year, making the whole of the nation poor when everything is adjusted to just that much more money and no one can afford it anymore. [dry]Won't that be fun.[/dry]
Actually, if you were going to use a cockamammy scheme like this, you may as well use the money to pay our international and national debts off first. We could pay them off thrice, at least.