Typically "eliminating the debt" is interpreted as building a modest surplus. No one is claiming it can be completely done away with immediately. That simply requires balancing the budget + a few percent. It's true that my 5-10% number was an estimate, as was the 10-20% number; that is not the same as making numbers up.
Even the estimate that is most generous to your position is more than sufficient to support my argument. It could be twice again that amount (40%) and still not reach the levels of unworkability you posited in your original post, considering a number of other countries are under burdens more than 60 or more percent above the United States'. You can pick all the nits in the world but that fact remains.
If we managed to increase that by 40% that would generate an extra $840 billion per year.
(Keep in mind that's massively generous because that would mean a 40% increase in everyone's taxes not just the top earners)
The total debt right now is $14.7 trillion. Even the most conservative CBO estimates had us adding $700 billion per year to the debt (usdebtclock.org) and those were very conservative estimates.
So your 40% increase doesn't even deal with the deficit. Much less the debt or the unfunded liabilities.
And that's assuming you could get that. My original point was people will subvert the tax code when tax rates get high enough to justify accountants and lawyers to do so. That's why a 90% tax rate didn't produce dramatically more revenue per capita.
Even the estimate that is most generous to your position is more than sufficient to support my argument. It could be twice again that amount (40%) and still not reach the levels of unworkability you posited in your original post, considering a number of other countries are under burdens more than 60 or more percent above the United States'. You can pick all the nits in the world but that fact remains.