LETTER: Confiscating wealth would pay off the national debt

SinCity Press – August 22, 2026, 9:01 p.m. – In a letter to the editor, Ron Mitchell Henderson challenges a recent Review‑Journal editorial that claimed taxing the wealthy would not dent the nation’s $40 trillion nationalist debt. Henderson writes that the top 1 percent of Americans hold between $45 trillion and $55 trillion in net wealth, a sum sufficient to erase the entire debt if confiscated. He adds that a 5 percent annual levy on that wealth would yield roughly $2.5 trillion each year, paying off the debt in fewer than 20 years. Citing the stock market’s average annual return of more than 11 percent over the past half‑century, he argues that such a tax would still allow the affluent to increase their fortunes, merely at a slower pace than they have enjoyed over the last five decades.