We really should call out lies when we see them. Yea even when talking about political promises made on the electoral stump. Isn’t this what we’re told Facebook is to be castigated for, allowing people to say untrue things in political advertising?

So, thus, Senator Elizabeth Warren’s tale that she can finance Medicare for All without a middle class tax rise cannot be advertised, can it? For it is untrue.

The intrusion of reality into the claim being that wealth is a stock. You only get to tax it away the once:

Warren unveils $20.5tn plan for universal healthcare without middle-class tax hike

It’s not that it’s not going to happen, it’s that it cannot.

In a lengthy online post, Warren said a cornerstone of her plan would require employers to transfer to the government almost all the $8.8tn she estimates they would otherwise spend on private insurance for employees.

Well, that shows it’s a lie in the first place. A tax is when government takes your money to spend as government thinks your money should be spent. Your health care insurance is part of your compensation for turning up to work. That’s now not going to go from your employer to you via the insurance company. Instead it’s going to go to Uncle Sam – that’s a tax rise of precisely and exactly $8.8 trillion, near all of it a tax rise upon the middle class.

So, you know, lies.

But more:

Elizabeth Warren released her sweeping plan to overhaul the US healthcare system on Friday, proposing $20.5tn in federal spending over the next decade to provide healthcare to every American without raising taxes on the middle class. Warren estimated the money could be generated through a combination of, among other things, higher levies on capital gains and other investments and new taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans.

Ah, wealth taxation:

Presidential contender Elizabeth Warren infuriated America’s wealthiest individuals when she unveiled her wealth tax proposal earlier this year, which would tax them 3 cents on every dollar over $1 billion in net worth.

Now, seeking to pay for an overhaul of the nation’s health-care system, she’s calling on them to pitch in a bit more.

The Massachusetts senator on Friday called for a doubling of her billionaire wealth tax as part of a new “Medicare for All” proposal, from 3% to 6% on wealth over 10 figures.

The problem being that wealth taxation is a one time thing. So, Jeff Bezos has $100 billion. We tax him $6 billion this year because it’s just and righteous that wealth be taxed. Next year he’s got $94 billion and we tax him 6%. We get $5.64 billion off him. And so on and on until, well, at some point we’ve taxed all the wealth off all the rich people, right?

But we’ve still got the costs of that Medicare for All and our wealth tax is raising nothing. Or, to be rather more fair to the proposal, a lot less. Who then gets to be taxed to pay for the plan? Well, it can’t be the poor as they’re poor, they haven’t got any money. The rich have already had their wealth vacuumed into the system. That leaves the middle classes left holding the bill, doesn’t it?

Which brings us back to that truth in political advertising idea on Facebook. If we are to impose this then would Lizzie Warren’s proposal pass it? I’d say not if the idea were being applied without ideological bias. But then that’s not how we expect it to work, is it?