How do you take a retiree couple whose main income-earning days are far behind them, and ask them to pay 25% or more on their consumption?
Not an impossible problem, but it’s THE problem.
Also, aren't people with an enormous amount of stored wealth "the rich"?
But also, government pensions tend to be, shall we say, unreasonably generous, because they live in that sour spot between "the legislature doesn't have to pay for this in the current year's budget" and "the union negotiates reasonable-seeming rules it knows it can game against public officials who are in their pocket or DGAF" e.g. pension is based on compensation in the last year before retirement and overtime is "awarded" based on seniority, so that people put in 80 hours of overtime every week in their last year. And then we're back to, aren't those the people we want to be taxing anyway?