I wasn't talking about a wealth tax, I was talking about a tax in general. Taxes are not theft. Paying a little more in taxes aren't going to result in the wealthiest Americans renouncing their citizenship. This is hyperbole. This system has been proven to work in other countries that have universal healthcare, and their health outcomes are at least as good as the U.S. at a fraction of the cost.
Ugh. Ok, let's take this apart.
1) My apologies, I thought you were referring to wealth taxes as that is what two of the leading Dem-nominees are proposing in order to pay for universal health care.
2) Taxes are not theft, you're right, to a point. The problem with taxes, as Jefferson said, "Democracy dies when the majority realizes they can vote themselves the wealth of the minority". To paraphrase. The problem isn't taxes, the problem is poor constructed taxes. I will come back to this below.
3) No one is asking for a "little more taxes" on the left, they are asking for wholesale skinning of sheep. Leaving wealth taxes aside, you have people calling for effective tax increases of ~25%+. So maybe you can be a little more specific as to what you think is reasonable and fair, what it should be used for, before we just hide being ambiguity here. You aren't paying for anything resembling more universal-ish healthcare without gutting the top 2%.
4) Back to #2, how things go in other countries. Let's examine that for a moment. One of the big differences between US taxation and EU taxation (which I am using as a proxy for social democracy/welfare state models) is the nature of taxation (ie: construction). Look at the effective total taxation rates for the top 1-2% in the top countries, but also look at the it by quintile. In rough numbers the wealthy in the EU have an effective tax burden that is 4-6% higher than their US peer. The middle class on the other hand has an effective tax rate that is 20-22% higher, and the lower quintiles in the 18-19% range. What's the differences? Well, in most of the EU capital gains (ie: investment income) is taxed lower than in the US, especially when geo-weighted. Wages are taxed higher, but that's because the EU has learned the lesson the American left hasn't. If you tax the crap out of business owners and investors you end up hurting yourself more.
5) Health outcomes. This is a canard if there ever was one. Yes, we spend much more on healthcare than the UK for example. However the metric often cited for quality of health outcomes and overall system scores is done by the WHO. If you look at how that measurement metric is actually constructed you can see an obvious bias. Two quick examples. First, about 30% of the WHO weighting is "access to care" so the US effectively bombs that metric by WHO standards because we don't have universal care. I don't think that is a fair way to measure outcomes, but you may. More to the point, infant mortality rate. Everyone loves talking about this one. However what they don't know is that infant mortality rate is measured as the death rate of infants 4-12 weeks in age. What's the problem you might ask? Well, in the US the overall survival rate of live births is *materially higher* than any nation on the planet. The difference is with the 4 week weighting all the sick babies the US keeps alive in the NICU for 5 weeks that later die kill our numbers. Meanwhile in France that baby died in 3 days because of lack of intervention, so their numbers look great.
If you really want to talk about health and spending, let's talk obesity. Our obesity rate is multiples higher than the EU. Why? Cost of calories, prevalence of cars, lack of walking, etc. If you have a society that is 4x more likely to be morbidly obese, you are going to have a painful curve on healthcare outcomes and cost.
Anything else?
