New York Democratic Rep. Thomas Suozzi has an idea. It’s just the beginnings of the idea, but it’s an idea. Given how extraordinarily well America’s wealthiest people did during a global pandemic while the American government tried (well, while a Democratic administration tried, anyway) to keep their captured consumer base alive and kicking, what if most wealthy people in America got a one-time tax bill to help pay for their nation’s survival? Maybe? Lil’ bit?

The core principle is called a wealth tax, and it’s been proposed by numerous Democrats and analysts as a way to even the playing field and scrape back some of the taxes that wealthy Americans have learned to routinely hide from public coffers through now bog-standard tax evasion schemes. A “wealth tax” is different from an income tax. The United States generally taxes income, or money earned each year. A wealth tax would be a tax based on total fortune, “earned” or not.

Congress and previous administrations have so weakened tax laws in the last few decades as to make the process of hiding “income” an almost trivial exercise. Hiding wealth is a bit more difficult, if only because the gilded class has learned it doesn’t need to bother. Jeff Bezos and other American billionaires do not have much “income,” even though they may have enough wealth to fund their own space programs.

American public schools still struggle to afford things like paper and pencils. The people selling them paper and pencils are making such bank that they’re talking about leaving Earth’s atmosphere for a little weekend getaway. Our current system seems to have some kinks that need working out.

That brings us to the Suozzi proposal. While master policy wonk Sen. Elizabeth Warren wants to see a wealth tax adopted on a permanent basis to fill in the holes through which wealthy Americans have been able to hide incomes and pay a relative pittance for keeping the nation that birthed them up and running—leading to our current inability to even fix the infrastructure past generations built—Suozzi’s proposal is for a one-time wealth tax to help fund the pandemic response and economic rebuilding.

In a Hill interview, Suozzi floats a one-time 2.5% wealth surcharge for those with total wealth above $50 million, and a 5% charge for those worth more than $100 million. Though these bounds mean the new tax would probably not affect anyone you, personally, have ever so much as bumped elbows with, it will still be enough to bring in about $450 billion.

The branding? Call it a “patriot tax.” Your nation has given you great wealth. Now that we’re in two simultaneous worldwide crises that affect the whole species, maybe kick in a little yacht-polishing money to get us back out of it?

Suozzi tells the Hill that the money raised could be used to offset proposed infrastructure costs (which, remember, in Biden’s proposal include significant investments towards not cooking our children alive in coming decades) and the deductions for state and local taxes that were axed by Republicans in the Trumpian years.

The first of those ideas is an easier sell than the second, because rebuilding energy infrastructure to both mitigate climate catastrophes and survive the ones that happen is now an existential crisis. The same can’t be said for SALT policies.

The “patriot tax,” then, would be an opportunity for America’s most wealthy individuals to show that they indeed wish to use their wealth to—oh, who are we kidding. We’re getting close to the point where the only two choices left are to tax the rich or to eat them, and pretty much all involved would rather it be the first than the second.

All this said, there doesn’t seem to be much chance of Suozzi’s particular version of the policy being enacted. Every single Republican is dead set against raising taxes on the wealthy, part of a 50-year policy push that can be most tersely described as “rich people are better than you.” Numerous Democrats will balk, claiming a wealth tax goes too far. Other Democrats will balk because making the tax a one-time charge does nothing to fix the underlying problem even while consuming enormous political resources.

But the branding—now that’s spectacular. The Patriot Tax. Whenever you want people to vote against their own self-interests, one of the easiest ways to do it is to claim that only dirty rotten America-haters would refuse to comply. It’s the path America regularly uses to clear the way for new wars, for example. Singling out people who have so bled America’s now-skeletal middle class as to now own their own islands and intercontinental ballistic missiles as being “unpatriotic” in their greed is not exactly a rhetorical stretch.

Of course tax dodgers are unpatriotic. It’s self-evident! And every wealthy American alive today has benefited greatly from tax policies specifically crafted to allow them to evade payment.

It’s still not my ideal branding, but I’m not the sort of person who’s ever going to be elected to Congress so what I think doesn’t matter much. I would rather we call this the “Save Humanity From Fucking Extinction Tax,” or the “This Is Your Yearly Bill For Protecting You From Pitchfork-Wielding Mobs Tax,” or the “Anyone Whose Personal Wealth Could Fund Their Own Space Program Needs To Sit The Hell Down For A While Tax.”

The heart of the issue remains. The American upper classes are quite convinced that their wealth is both earned and that their magnanimity is already so overwhelming that their country should not be expecting anything from them, but instead be getting out of their way and, when necessary, altering itself to better meet their own business needs. The notion that they should help pay for roads when they themselves have helicopters is foreign. The notion that workers should be paid enough to not require government assistance in order to survive is, for the scions of Walmart, confusing and enraging. The children of the great wars are quite certain that they, not governments, are the movers and shakers of history.

And if you don’t like it, they often threaten, they’ll depart to some other country they can buy outright.

A small but ongoing wealth tax seems like it would be a tidier solution than either a one-time attempt to recoup lost tax revenue or attempts to repair now thoroughly ridiculous income tax policies so that they Not Suck. If you are worth $50 million or $100 million, you are more dependent on government for your wealth than the poor are dependent on government for their food. We can try appealing to a sense of “patriotism” here, for a class of people increasingly of the opinion that they don’t give a damn what country they’re in so long as they don’t have to look at poor people or share public parks with irritatingly happy children, and maybe it would at least work to clarify the issue. Maybe.

Or perhaps the wealthy will simply build their rockets and sail grumpily off to Mars, a taxless new world where governments don’t matter and laws can’t reach. It’s a bit unnerving to contemplate just how close to that particular shard of future history we might soon be.