> In reality, the tax burden would be progressive, and upper middle class people would rightly ask why they're paying extra taxes for this. Will they ask? Sure

> In reality, the tax burden would be progressive, and upper middle class people would rightly ask why they're paying extra taxes for this. Will they ask? Sure. Will they rightly ask? Absolutely not. I didn't mean to imply that eliminating (or as someone pointed out a gradual ramping down) means testing would save us money. That gets us to basic income territory and there are a lot of unknowns especially with whether "people with vulnerabilities" will be better off with a small amount of cash and a salute every month. I'm not saying most people will have trouble (I love basic income) but that it is not a one size fits all solution. Back to the topic at hand, if we want to expand entitlements to cover more people then we absolutely need to either: 1. reduce what we cover 2. increase taxes on the wealthy. We have the most generous poor people in the entire world. The poor (yes, if a family makes say under $60k a year with two adults working full time I consider them poor) oppose tax increase on the wealthy.