The US government has a massively inefficient record at tax enforcement. But likewise it has a terrible healthcare regime. There's no need to hand the country over to Socialists because of some poorly framed policies that were inevitably poorly enforced. Once they have the US, its never coming back.
I think we agree, neither of us wants a socialist government or even Sanders or Warren. I'm saying that you're going to get it no matter if you want it or not if you don't do something about what is indisputably a growing wealth inequality in the country. The solution isn't telling people on the poor side of that divide that they're wrong and just need to come around to a different way of thinking about it, or to convince them that this isn't a real problem or that it's politics or a game....really nothing in the preaching to them side of the equation. None of that will change the inevitability of bad things happening when the inequality becomes too large and the solution gets taken out of our hands and put into the hands of the populists, who I agree destroy value in their attempt to "fix" things. So why don't we try something new here. Why don't we attempt to fix things now, before the disparity gets to a dangerous level, before the decision gets taken out of our hands and beyond our ability to influence it? To do that we have to stop with the fantasy that this won't eventually happen, it almost inevitably will if we remain on the current trajectory. Heck, we're pretty close to a Sanders or Warren Presidency right now...that fact points to a system that isn't very robust! As I said I think you were initially on to something when thinking about economic efficiency, why not flush that out a bit? Why not think about setting up incentives and disincentives that lead to decreased wealth disparity over time? I'm not sure what the answer is, but I'm pretty sure it's decidedly not telling the increasingly poor that they just need to be happy with what they've got and keep a system in place that results in the increasingly rich taking a larger and larger portion of the nation's GDP.