The Inner Monologue

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When UBS talks about governments “mobilizing and encouraging” private wealth, it is describing something real — but incomplete. The mechanisms are familiar. Inflation. Regulation. Gentle coercion. All of it works well enough to dull the pain.

But dulling pain is not healing.

The uncomfortable reality is that there is only one path that actually fixes the U.S. debt problem, and it is far more complex than wealth taxes, austerity, or financial repression.

It requires accessing the vast, concentrated wealth at the very top without turning that access into a permanent expansion of government obligations.

And that is precisely where every previous attempt has failed.

The Debt Problem Is Not a Revenue Problem — Until It Is

For most of modern American history, the U.S. could grow its way out of debt. Productivity gains, population growth, and expanding labor participation made deficits survivable.

That era is ending.

Demographics are turning. Interest costs are compounding. Growth is real but no longer explosive. At some point, revenue matters again.

But revenue alone is not enough.

New revenue that immediately creates new entitlements is worse than useless. It institutionalizes imbalance.

The problem is not that the U.S. can’t raise money.
It’s that it has never proven it can raise money without instantly promising to spend it forever.

The Ultra-Wealthy Are the Only Pool That Scales — But Only Once

Here is the part policymakers avoid saying out loud:

The wealth held by the top 0.1% is large enough to matter — but only if treated as a stabilizing resource, not a piggy bank.

This wealth can:

• Reduce debt
• Buy down interest costs
• Restore fiscal credibility

It cannot sustainably fund new permanent programs.

Once spent, it’s gone.
Once promised, it creates expectations that cannot be met twice.

That is why taxing ultra-wealth must be paired with ironclad fiscal containment, or it simply accelerates failure.

The Political Mistake We Always Make

Every time governments talk about taxing the rich, they frame it as a moral victory or a funding source for social expansion.

That framing is fatal.

If new revenue is treated as a windfall, it will be spent like one.
If it is sold as “found money,” it will create permanent claims.

A real solution requires something radically unfashionable in American politics:

Ring-fencing.

What a Real Strategy Would Actually Look Like

A genuine fix would have to include all of the following — not as slogans, but as binding policy architecture.

1. Ultra-Targeted Wealth Access — Clearly Not the 99%

The tax must be:

• Explicitly confined to the ultra-wealthy
• Impossible to confuse with middle-class taxation
• Designed so that 99% of Americans know, viscerally, that it does not apply to them

That means:

• Very high thresholds
• Narrow base
• Clear definitions
• Minimal spillover into small business, home equity, or retirement assets

If the middle class fears it, it fails politically. If the wealthy fear it too much, capital flees. The design window is narrow — but real.

2. Zero New Entitlements — Written in Law, Not Rhetoric

Every dollar raised must be legally prohibited from funding new programs.

Not discouraged. Not promised away. Prohibited.

Revenue from ultra-wealth must go only to:

• Debt reduction
• Interest cost suppression
• Fiscal stabilization reserves

This is the single hardest part — and the most essential.

Without this constraint, the policy collapses into performative redistribution and leaves the debt trajectory untouched.

3. Revenue Treated as a One-Time Structural Repair, Not Ongoing Income

This money cannot be treated as recurring income.

It must be handled like:

• Selling land to pay down debt
• Paying off a mortgage early
• Repairing a cracked foundation

Useful once. Dangerous if relied upon.

Any framework that assumes continual extraction from ultra-wealth to fund baseline operations is dishonest about scale and sustainability.

4. Burden Relief for the Bottom 90% — Not Through Spending, But Through Removal

The political legitimacy of such a policy depends on what happens below the top.

Relief must come not from new benefits, but from:

• Lower payroll tax pressure
• Reduced regressive taxation
• Less reliance on inflation as an implicit tax
• Greater stability in prices and interest rates

In other words: stop extracting from everyone else by stealth.

If the bottom 90% continues to lose purchasing power through inflation and hidden taxes, no one will care that billionaires paid more on paper.

Why This Is So Hard — and Why It Hasn’t Happened

This strategy requires:

• Long-term thinking in a short-term political system
• Self-denial by legislators who benefit from promising spending
• Trust mechanisms strong enough to convince both voters and capital

It requires admitting that:

• Not every problem gets a program
• Not every revenue stream should be spent
• And not every act of taxation is redistribution

That is deeply uncomfortable in American politics.

UBS Is Pointing at the Pressure — Not the Solution

UBS is correct that private wealth will be mobilized. It already is — quietly, indirectly, imperfectly.

But unless the U.S. builds a strategy that:

• Targets only the ultra-wealthy
• Locks the revenue away from entitlement growth
• Reduces pressure on the bottom 90%
• And treats wealth access as stabilization, not stimulus

Then all we are doing is making the problem a little less bad.

And history is clear about systems that rely on that strategy:

They don’t fail because they lacked tools.
They fail because they refused to use the hardest one correctly.