We don't just take the discussion away from what it will take to get what we want; we also either:
(a) implicitly constrain our notion of what is possible ("what is possible is what we can offset with a redistributive pay-for"), or
(b) in reckoning with the fact that billionaires can't (for instance) pay for single-payer health care, force ourselves to reject entirely the notion of accounting and economics (see MMT, which is a serious idea in academia but finds an entirely unserious expression in public policy).
Europe doesn't seem to have this problem; they seem simply to decide that everyone needs guaranteed-issue, subsidized, affordable health insurance (or a single payer), and then tax the middle class to pay for it.
(a) implicitly constrain our notion of what is possible ("what is possible is what we can offset with a redistributive pay-for"), or
(b) in reckoning with the fact that billionaires can't (for instance) pay for single-payer health care, force ourselves to reject entirely the notion of accounting and economics (see MMT, which is a serious idea in academia but finds an entirely unserious expression in public policy).
Europe doesn't seem to have this problem; they seem simply to decide that everyone needs guaranteed-issue, subsidized, affordable health insurance (or a single payer), and then tax the middle class to pay for it.