Sure you can! The corporate and income tax burdens in the U.S. are already at similar levels to Germany, France, the U.K., Spain, and Italy, but they're paying for just apples, versus apples + oranges. If we want to also buy everyone oranges, we should probably pay for those oranges by looking at the tax-revenue sources where the U.S. burden is much lower than in Europe.
The political question is: how do we go from taxes being 27% of GDP to taxes being 37.5% of GDP. (That's the level in Germany, and there is no way we do a welfare state more efficiently than Germany.) That's like $2 trillion. If we raise that money through higher income and corporate taxes, we'd be departing substantially from the norms established by the big EU countries. If we raise that money instead through higher middle class taxes, we'd be keeping within those norms. Not only that, the actual tax increase would be offset to a large degree by the savings to the middle class from not having to pay health insurance premiums and tuition fees.
That calculation double counts US public healthcare spending, which makes up about half of that 17%: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-.... It also leaves out Germany private health care spending, which is about 2% of GDP. So it’s more like 37% versus 40%.
The calculation is also irrelevant to the question of what taxes should pay for the 9-10% of GDP you want to transition from the private sector to the public sector. Right now, healthcare premiums are effectively a social insurance tax capped at a certain income level. Paying for universal healthcare with an explicit social insurance tax, like in Germany, would keep things within the norms established by Europe. Paying for it with income taxes or corporate taxes, like the left wants to do, would obliterate those norms, catapulting the US to the top of the charts in terms of income or corporate tax burden.
I feel like you’re arguing against a point I’m not raising. I think we should have universal healthcare. I think your calculation shows why the effective tax increase wouldn’t be as big as you might think if you account for the cost of healthcare premiums. My point here is completely different. It’s that we should follow European norms in choosing what taxes we use to fund that transition. Doubling the SS payroll tax would raise about a trillion in revenue, about 5% of GDP. A 10% federal VAT would raise another 5% of GDP in revenue. That tax increase would fall on the middle class, but would largely be offset by savings from not having to pay for health insurance. And the overall ratios of different types of taxes would stay within OECD norms.
The political question is: how do we go from taxes being 27% of GDP to taxes being 37.5% of GDP. (That's the level in Germany, and there is no way we do a welfare state more efficiently than Germany.) That's like $2 trillion. If we raise that money through higher income and corporate taxes, we'd be departing substantially from the norms established by the big EU countries. If we raise that money instead through higher middle class taxes, we'd be keeping within those norms. Not only that, the actual tax increase would be offset to a large degree by the savings to the middle class from not having to pay health insurance premiums and tuition fees.