There is something emotionally satisfying about watching a wealthy person call for higher taxes on people like himself. It feels civic-minded, even noble. A recent commentary by former Utah senator, Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney fits squarely into this tradition. Faced with a looming fiscal cliff, Romney concludes that entitlement reform is unavoidable and that higher taxes on affluent Americans must be part of the solution.

Don’t be fooled, though. Yes, the status quo is unsustainable, and pretending otherwise is reckless. But taxing the rich can’t meaningfully solve our underlying fiscal problems. Worse, pursuing that illusion risks making those problems harder to fix while foreclosing opportunities for the next generation.

Start with a basic arithmetic problem that never goes away: High-income households already shoulder a disproportionate share of the federal income-tax burden. The top 1% pay roughly 40% of income-tax revenues; the top 10% pay well over two-thirds. And when taxes and other transfers of wealth are factored in, the system has become increasingly progressive over time.

Whatever one thinks about fairness, this fact has huge implications for collecting revenue. There’s simply not enough taxable income at the top to finance a government built around large, universal, middle-class benefits.

Romney proposes raising revenue by removing the cap on payroll taxes, taxing assets more heavily at death, ending like-kind exchanges in real estate, limiting state and local tax deductions and closing the carried-interest preference. None of these ideas are new. Their revenue effects have been studied repeatedly. Even under optimistic assumptions, their combined yield over a decade amounts to only a fraction of projected deficits. Trillions sound impressive in isolation, but against tens of trillions in red ink, they’re a rounding error.

There’s an even deeper problem with the “tax the rich” impulse. It assumes that those being taxed will pay the full cost without simply reducing their tax exposure. Taxes change behavior. They alter investment decisions, career choices and the accumulation of human capital. They nudge employers toward retirement rather than toward another round of hiring.

And higher marginal tax rates at the top do not just affect today’s wealthy people; they shape the incentives of tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, engineers, doctors and business builders.

This is where moral posturing a la Romney becomes especially troubling. It’s easy to say “tax me more” once you’re already rich — with wealth already built, diversified and largely insulated. But if such a system had been imposed earlier, it would have reduced the likelihood that as many individuals would have become wealthy in the first place.

In other words, the call to tax the rich today makes it harder for young people to become rich tomorrow. Thanks a lot.

That matters not because everyone should be a billionaire but because economic mobility depends on the possibility of outsized success. When the returns on extraordinary or unique effort, risk-taking and skill acquisition are diminished, fewer people invest in them. The evidence is clear that more progressive tax systems reduce incentives to accumulate human capital and expand businesses over the long run. These costs show up slowly — in lower productivity, slower growth and fewer opportunities. But they doVeronique de Rugy is the George Gibbs Chair in Political Economy and a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. To find out more about Veronique de Rugy and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2026 CREATORS.COM