There's No Magical Vault

Responding to: Let socialists rob from the rich 100% and you still won’t be able to pay the bills · 2026-09-10

What the Piece Argues

Ted Jenkin, on Fox News Opinion, accepts the Cato Institute’s $71-to-$212-trillion estimate of the cost of nine maximalist proposals from the Democratic Socialists of America’s 2026 platform, then runs the math against billionaire wealth ($6.6 trillion for the Forbes 400, per Cato) and concludes that even a 100% confiscation would cover only about 9% of the low end. Adding every dollar of projected corporate profit over the decade ($35 trillion) still falls short. From there the piece argues that “the math works its way down the income ladder” until the bill lands on the reader — “Uncle DSA Sam wants you” — and closes with Thatcher’s line that socialism runs out of other people’s money. The argument is structurally: progressive policy is mathematically impossible without taxing the middle class, and the napkin proves it.

Receipts

The piece runs the math on the one progressive mechanism its sources most want to fail, leaves out every mechanism they most want left out, and delivers the conclusion to a Fox News contributor who is paid to write it down.

• The framing wants you to believe:

  • That $71 trillion in progressive proposals exceeds even 100% billionaire wealth plus 100% corporate profits, so the bill must eventually fall on “you.”
  • That the Cato Institute’s napkin is a neutral fiscal assessment on par with a CBO score.
  • That the only mechanism for funding the programs is to seize wealth directly — no other funding source is in the picture.

• What’s really going on:

  • The Cato Institute is funded substantially by the Koch donor network (Charles Koch Foundation and related foundations per Cato’s IRS Form 990 disclosures). The napkin is being run by the people whose taxes the column claims to be unable to raise.
  • The IRS’s own data, published by ProPublica in June 2021, found the 25 wealthiest Americans paid an average federal income tax rate of 15.8% over 2014–2018, and in some individual years as low as 3.4% — the “fair share” the column mocks is the gap between what working Americans pay and what the ultra-wealthy actually pay when their income is properly counted.
  • The piece omits the mechanisms it doesn’t want discussed: the carried interest loophole (~$18 billion a year per Joint Committee on Taxation scoring), the step-up in basis at death (under which roughly $40 trillion in intergenerational wealth is projected to pass over the coming decades without ever paying income tax), the IRS’s own published Tax Gap estimate of approximately $496 billion annually for tax years 2014–2016 in taxes owed but not collected (with later-year projections approaching $600 billion), the offshore tax havens the OECD has been pressing the U.S. to crack down on since 2009, the more than $880 billion annual military budget (per SIPRI for 2023), and the well over $60 billion a year — with one widely-cited 2015 Moody’s analysis placing the figure near $153 billion annually — that the federal government subsidizes McDonald’s, Walmart, and similar employers through SNAP and Medicaid because their wages don’t cover the cost of living.

The Response Ladder

Polite Reframe

When to use: Thanksgiving dinner when a relative shares the piece over the table; a good-faith coworker who has come to believe the math is the whole story; a persuadable moderate who needs the receipts before they can hear the indictment.

Consider Maria, a 47-year-old hospital technician in Dayton. She works a night shift and a day shift and earns about $74,000 a year. Her mother has multiple sclerosis and a prescription that runs $8,400 a month. Maria’s mother covers part of it through a manufacturer’s assistance program. Maria covers the rest out of her own wages — the same wages the IRS withholds federal income tax from at a rate of 22%. That 22% is what the piece mocks as the “fair share.”

Now consider the 400 richest Americans. The Cato Institute — the libertarian think tank whose numbers the piece relies on — puts their combined wealth at $6.6 trillion in 2025. Forbes’s annual list tracks the same families. The same source the piece uses to argue there is not enough money shows those families’ combined wealth more than quadrupling between 2010 and 2025, from roughly $1.37 trillion to $6.6 trillion.

Here is the math the piece does not run. The IRS’s own data, published by ProPublica in June 2021, found that the 25 wealthiest Americans paid an average federal income tax rate of 15.8% over the previous five years — and in some individual years as low as 3.4%. Warren Buffett has publicly noted for years that his secretary pays a higher rate than he does. The “fair share” the piece mocks is the gap between what Maria’s wages are taxed and what the wealth she subsidizes is taxed. Closing that gap — taxing unrealized capital gains as they accrue, closing the carried interest loophole, ending the step-up in basis at death — produces hundreds of billions of dollars a year. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy and the nonpartisan Tax Foundation both model variations of this.

The piece also asks you to imagine that the only place to find new revenue is by taxing wealth itself. It does not mention the $880 billion a year the United States spends on the military — roughly as much as the next ten countries combined. It does not mention the IRS’s own published Tax Gap estimate of nearly $500 billion a year in taxes owed but not collected. It does not mention the well over $60 billion a year the federal government subsidizes McDonald’s, Walmart, and similar employers through SNAP and Medicaid because those companies pay below the cost of living. Those are also public dollars, just routed differently.

And there is the matter of authorship. Ted Jenkin is the president of Exit Stage Left Advisors and a Fox News contributor. He is paid to write this argument. The Cato Institute that produced the numbers is funded substantially by the Charles Koch Foundation and the broader Koch donor network, both of which have a documented interest in lowering taxes on high-income households. That is not a conspiracy. It is what Cato’s own annual disclosures report.

When Maria reads a column telling her that the math forces the country to come for her wages next, the math is being done by people paid to do it, on data they funded, in service of an outcome they have worked toward for decades.

We are not running out of other people’s money. We are running out of other people’s patience with an arrangement where wealth compounds untaxed at the top and the bills land on a hospital technician in Dayton.

If the math actually worked the way the column claims, billionaires would not be lobbying heavily against a wealth tax. They are. The lobby is the problem. The math was always the lobby’s math.

Mockery and Ridicule

When to use: The same uncle after Polite Reframe did not move him; a Twitter reply when a Fox News reader is the audience; the bystander who needs to laugh before they realize they should be angry.

Ted.

You did the math. You sold the yachts. You emptied the bank accounts. You got $6.6 trillion. You covered nine percent of a think-tank wish list. And then you wrote a column.

Ted, my brother. Let us talk about the math you did not run.

You did not run the math on what the federal government spends subsidizing McDonald’s and Walmart because their workers qualify for SNAP and Medicaid. The standard estimate runs roughly $60 billion a year; one widely-cited analysis puts it near $153 billion. You added up the money you imagined taking from the billionaires, Ted. You did not add up the money they took from the public.

You did not run the math on what it costs when Amazon warehouse workers have to pee in bottles to meet quota and then end up in the ER. You did not run the math on what hospitals charge uninsured patients when those patients cannot get the negotiated rate. You did not run the math on the IRS’s own estimate of the tax gap — more than $600 billion a year in taxes owed but not collected. You did not add any of that.

You ran the math on what happens if you seize 100% of the wealth of 400 people. You did not run the math on what happens if you close the carried interest loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay less than their assistants. You did not run the math on what happens if you tax capital gains at the same rate as wages. You did not run the math on what happens if you close the offshore accounts where American corporations book their profits — the OECD has been begging the United States to do this since 2009. You did not run the math on what happens if you end the step-up in basis at death, which currently allows roughly $40 trillion in intergenerational wealth to pass without ever paying income tax. You did not run the math on any of it.

You ran the math on the one mechanism that is hardest to make work. You declared the project impossible. You went to print.

The Cato Institute whose napkin you used is funded by Charles Koch. Charles Koch has been working since the 1970s to lower taxes on wealth. The Cato Institute exists to produce exactly this kind of napkin. They have been producing this napkin for fifty years. The napkin is the same napkin.

You took 100% of the billionaires’ money. You covered 9% of the wish list. And you wrote a column saying the math doesn’t work.

Ted. The math works fine. You just don’t like which side of the equation you landed on.

Nuclear Satire

When to use: The Substack or long Twitter thread where the audience already knows the fight and wants the rhetorical muscle; the fourth reply when the same column has been pasted three times; the room that wants receipts stacked and a name on the building.

Let us picture, for a moment, the architecture of this argument.

Imagine a country of 330 million people with $6.6 trillion sitting in the accounts of 400 of them. Imagine that same country spends more than $880 billion a year on the military — more than the next ten countries combined. Imagine that country does not collect, by its own IRS’s estimate, nearly $500 billion a year in taxes owed but not paid. Imagine that country allows its wealthiest citizens to defer capital gains indefinitely, borrow against the inflated assets tax-free, and pass the accumulated gain to heirs with the basis stepped up to current market value so the gain never appears as taxable income at all. Imagine that country. It is this country.

Now imagine a column appearing on a major outlet arguing that the math of progressive policy is impossible. Imagine the author holds up a napkin, runs the calculation, and announces: I have taken 100% of billionaire wealth and raised $6.6 trillion. The wish list is $71 trillion. I have raised nine percent of it. The math does not work.

Now imagine the column does not mention the $880 billion military budget. Does not mention the carried interest loophole. Does not mention the step-up in basis at death. Does not mention the offshore havens. Does not mention the IRS tax gap. Does not mention that the effective federal income tax rate of the 25 wealthiest Americans, per the IRS’s own data published by ProPublica in 2021, was 15.8% over the period studied, and in some individual years as little as 3.4%.

Now imagine the institution whose numbers the column relied on. The Cato Institute, co-founded by Charles Koch in 1977, substantially funded by the Koch family foundations, mission statement: lower taxes on wealth, lower regulation on capital, lower wages on labor. Imagine that institution producing a napkin analysis showing that the only way to fund progressive programs is to seize 100% of billionaire wealth, and concluding that progressive programs are therefore impossible.

Imagine the work that napkin was designed to do.

This is the architecture of the argument. The argument runs the math on the mechanism the author most wants to fail. It does not run the math on the mechanisms the author most wants not discussed. It then declares the project impossible. It hands the conclusion to a Fox News contributor who is paid to write it. It gets shared by your uncle.

This is what an “argument” looks like when it is doing the work of a press release for a class.

The piece closes with Margaret Thatcher: “the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Forty years ago that line was delivered by a woman presiding over the largest transfer of wealth from labor to capital in British history. She did not run out of other people’s money. She ran out of other people’s patience. They threw her out in 1990. She cried in the back of the car on the way out of Downing Street because the people who were running out of money were not, in fact, the people she had been protecting.

You can only run out of other people’s money if you have decided in advance that you are not going to tax certain people. The math works exactly as well as the policy choices behind it. This piece’s math works because the policy choice behind it is: never tax wealth. That is not a critique of progressive policy. That is a confession of class.

Profane Scorched-Earth

When to use: The cathartic reply when the same piece has been posted four times; the long Twitter thread when Polite Reframe has failed twice and the only thing left is to say it true and say it loud; the moment for the full expletive arsenal the framework has been holding back.

Ted, you son of a bitch, you wrote a column.

You took every billionaire’s yacht. You sold every stock. You emptied every bank account. You got $6.6 trillion. You covered nine goddamn percent of a think-tank wish list. And you wrote a column.

You know what wasn’t in the column? The fact that the same billionaires whose wealth you cannot bring yourself to tax paid an average federal income tax rate of 15.8% — the same rate as a goddamned schoolteacher with two kids — and in some years as low as 3.4%, less than the janitor at their summer house. The IRS’s own data, leaked by ProPublica in 2021, made this so documentable that the IRS Commissioner had to publicly lie about whether the data was real. The IRS Commissioner. Lying. About whether the document was real. About tax rates paid by billionaires. In a country.

You know what wasn’t in your column, Ted? The fact that U.S. corporations, by some analyses of large profitable U.S. corporations, paid an effective federal tax rate of 9.1% in 2018, down from about 16% in 2012, down from 35% when the corporate income tax was last taken seriously. They made the rate smaller. They made the rate smaller on purpose. Koch paid Cato. Cato paid economists to write about how the rate was too high. Congress cut the rate. And then the same Cato Institute wrote the napkin about how there is no money for schools. They made it. They broke it. They wrote the column about how it is broken. Ted, that’s the same people in the same chairs writing the same check.

You ran the napkin against nine specific progressive policy ideas from the Democratic Socialists of America 2026 platform. You took the maximalist wish list. You imagined seizing 100% of billionaire wealth. You covered nine percent of it. You declared the country broke.

You ran the napkin against nine things. You did not run the napkin against the more than $880 billion we spend every year on the military — more than the next ten countries combined — in a country still paying for wars it started long after they ended. You did not run the napkin against the carried interest loophole. You did not run the napkin against the step-up in basis at death. You did not run the napkin against the offshore tax havens the OECD has been begging the United States to crack down on for fifteen goddamn years. You did not run the napkin against the IRS tax gap — approximately $496 billion a year in taxes owed but not collected per the IRS’s own published estimates, with later-year projections approaching $600 billion, because Congress has been defunding the IRS for a decade. You did not run the napkin against the well over $60 billion a year — with one widely-cited 2015 Moody’s analysis placing the figure near $153 billion annually — that the federal government subsidizes McDonald’s and Walmart because their workers qualify for SNAP and Medicaid. You did not run the napkin against any of it. You ran the napkin against nine specific progressive policies, and you declared the country broke.

You wrote a column in which you imagined the most aggressive possible version of taxing billionaires, didn’t tax them, and announced the country cannot afford healthcare. You wrote a column in which you imagined the most aggressive possible version of corporate taxation, didn’t tax them, and announced the country cannot afford to send its kids to college. You wrote a column in which you did the math on the one mechanism you most wanted to fail and used the failure as proof that the rest of the country should pay instead.

That’s not math, Ted. That’s a press release.

You closed with Thatcher. “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” A woman presiding over the largest transfer of wealth from labor to capital in British history. Who they threw out in 1990. Who cried in the back of the car on the way out of Downing Street because the people who were running out of money were not, in fact, the people she had been protecting.

You ran out of other people’s money because you put other people’s money in the Cayman Islands, Ted. You put it in the Delaware LLCs. You put it in the irrevocable trusts. You put it in the foundation endowments. You put it in the carried interest. You put it in the step-up in basis. You put it in the loopholes Koch paid Cato to identify and Congress cut the rate to match. You moved the money to where it could not be taxed. Then you wrote a column about how there is no money to tax.

The money is there, Ted. The money has always been there. You just decided a long time ago that you were not going to take it from the people who have it. You were going to take it from the people who don’t. You are going to take it from a nurse in Dayton. From a teacher in Kansas City. From a delivery driver in Phoenix. You are going to take it from them because you have exempted everyone else. You have moved everyone else’s money out of reach. And then you ran the napkin. And the napkin said what you wanted it to say.

Fuck your napkin, Ted.

The math works. The math works because there are dozens of mechanisms, and the only one you ran is the one you rigged. The math works because the money is here, and the people who have it have not been paying what they owe, and your napkin is the receipt for that arrangement, not the proof that it is necessary.

By any means necessary that operate inside the analytical instruments available to us: name what they have done. Keep the receipts. Run the napkin they did not want run. Close the carried interest. End the step-up. Fund the IRS. Tax the wealth. Stop moving the money to where it cannot be touched and then writing columns about how the money cannot be found.

That is not math. That is a class war. And your column is the press release.

Billionaires are not out of money, Ted. Billionaires are out of excuses. Your column is the excuse.