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Forbes is out with its annual billionaires list, so it’s time for a reminder that even if progressive politicians ate the rich, it would barely take the edge off their hunger. President Biden’s recent budget plan includes a disguised wealth tax on centimillionaires, and he’s always whispering into the microphone that folks need to pay their “fair share.”

Well, the U.S. has 735 billionaires, according to Forbes. Their combined assets come to $4.7 trillion. That’s based on stock values as of March 11. It also factors in “a variety of assets, including private companies, real estate, art and more.” One caveat is that Forbes doesn’t “pretend to know each billionaire’s private balance sheet,” so we can’t say how many stingray tanks and volcano lairs are missing.

What could the U.S. buy for $4.7 trillion? To start, it’s barely enough to cover the Build Back Better agenda that Mr. Biden pitched last year. The BBB bill tried to game Congress’s budget rules by phasing out programs early to lower the price. But if everything were made permanent, as Democrats intended, the cost would be $4.6 trillion over 10 years, according to an estimate by the Penn Wharton Budget Model.

Don’t even consider Medicare for All, which analysts have pegged at something like $33 trillion over a decade. What about paying down the national debt, which West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin worries about? As of last Monday the Treasury said debt held by the public is $23,877,671,033,998.57. In other words, all the assets of all American billionaires could pay off less than 20%. This also doesn’t include the unfunded liabilities for promised benefits under Medicare and Social Security.

How about expropriation for profit? Take everything the billionaires own and divvy it up. As of Tuesday the Census Bureau put the U.S. population at 332,601,166. Divide that into $4.7 trillion, and each budding bolshevik would get . . . about $14,000. If that sounds lower than you hoped, it’s because very large numbers are hard for humans to grasp intuitively.

But the math shows why a Scandinavian welfare state can’t be funded by raiding Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and pals. There aren’t enough rich to go around. That’s why Europe soaks the middle class to fund its welfare state. In the U.S. the top statutory tax rate on income kicks in at roughly nine times the average wage, according to the OECD. In Denmark the top rate begins at 1.3 times the average wage, and in Sweden it’s 1.1.

Democrats say they only want to tax the rich, but progressives would be back soon enough for the doctors, lawyers, small-business owners, and everyone else.