The calamitous coronavirus pandemic has befallen an America afflicted by massive, entrenched economic inequality. The resulting hardships — both present and still to come — fall most heavily on the already disadvantaged. This terrible suffering demands an exceptional response, and policies that were controversial just months ago are common sense today, or ought to be. Our extraordinary battle against the pandemic should draw on the immense reserves that the most privileged among us have accumulated over decades of abundance. To achieve this goal, America should institute a wealth tax.

Congress has already enacted three bipartisan relief packages, including the Cares Act, that collectively provide roughly $2 trillion in pandemic aid. Further assistance is hopefully on the way. These are necessary but enormous public expenses. To put them in perspective, the stimulus package enacted in the shadow of the Great Recession was $831 billion, while recent annual federal budget deficits average about $700 billion.

Congress has rightly been more concerned with providing pandemic relief than with paying for it. But eventually, the bill will come due. Government borrowing is tempting because debt is now so cheap. But borrowing will in the end burden the young, who — already worse off than their parents’ generation — are now suffering their second economic calamity in a decade. Instead, the relief effort should be funded through a one-time wealth tax imposed on the richest Americans, whose wealth has exploded alongside rising inequality.

The precise contours of such a tax obviously require detailed design. Still, a rough outline illustrates the basic idea. The wealthiest 5 percent of American families now hold $57 trillion, or two-thirds of all household wealth in the country (up from about half in 1960). An exemption for the first $2.5 million of household wealth would exclude the bottom 95 percent from paying any tax at all and leave the top 5 percent with total taxable wealth of roughly $40 trillion. A 5 percent tax on the richest 5 percent of households could thus raise up to $2 trillion.