Pete Buttigieg would like to take care of you in your dotage—or, rather, he wants taxpayers to do it. This week his presidential campaign posted his latest policy plan, a 19-page outline for “dignity and security in retirement.” It’s hardly modest, which is why Mayor Pete has called it his Gray New Deal. He would:

• Expand Social Security with “a new special minimum benefit of 125 percent of the federal poverty line for any senior who has worked at least 30 years.” Unpaid caregivers of any “child, elderly, or disabled dependent” would be “awarded credit toward Social Security benefits” as if working for pay—applied in some cases “retroactively by five years.”

Mr. Buttigieg doesn’t say what these additions would cost, but Social Security is on track to go broke as it is. The program is expected to pay more in benefits than it raises in taxes next year, and this funding gap will widen. Modest changes, such as raising the retirement age by one month every two years, would help, but Mayor Pete rules out benefit adjustments. That means tax, tax, tax.

• Raise money by applying unspecified “additional Social Security taxes” to personal income above $250,000. Meantime, “work with Congress to develop options for enshrining a process of automatically adjusting high earners’ contributions to keep Social Security solvent without ever cutting benefits.”

This is a huge tax increase. The current Social Security payroll tax is 12.4%, split between workers and employers. But it applies only to wages of $132,900, after which the tax comes off. Mr. Buttigieg doesn’t specify a rate for his surtax, but he suggests it would cover all high income, from $250,000 to infinity. That would kill the fiction of Social Security as an “earned” program, even if Mayor Pete gives these people new “modest Social Security benefits for their extra contributions.”