And how would the government pay for things? Clearly even with 200mn people, each paying $2000 in tax, you'd only have $400bn in tax revenue. The current total

And how would the government pay for things? Clearly even with 200mn people, each paying $2000 in tax, you'd only have $400bn in tax revenue. The current total US tax revenue is $6.8tn (federal + state + other). If you upped the tax to $10k, you'd still only be talking about $2tn, but you'd have huge swathes of the country forced into poverty as they'd be unable to pay it. You'd need immense corporation taxes in order to make up the shortfall. Currently US business taxes make around 8% of the budget, compared to 36% for income tax. A flat dollar tax is nuts. The rich make their money from the labour of many, many people. They may only personally use the roads the same as others, but the thousands of their employees that need to drive to work need it a thousand times more. Without that, the rich would have no business. Ditto with healthcare. You need your workers healthy and they can't afford healthcare, you pay for it or you soon won't have many workers. $10k does not pay for much healthcare. Blindness to the social costs that are picked up by the government, does not mean that they don't exist. The rich can pay a bit more and still be rich. They need to pay a bit more or they won't be rich for long, their workers and customers won't exist anymore.