Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher

Soaking the exceedingly rich doesn't solve the budget deficit, true. Erasing the entire debt would be a slow and expensive process that would spread much higher taxes across most or all earners. But you don't pay for the national debt, mostly. Recent payments on the national debt are around $420 billion - about 11% of the federal budget. God knows that's not small, but it's far from 'mostly', and 2/3 of the debt is even held inside the US.