We do tax some wealth: property taxes. There are residential property taxes and business property taxes. And wealth managers often charge fees based on a perce

We do tax some wealth: property taxes. There are residential property taxes and business property taxes. And wealth managers often charge fees based on a percentage of assets (at least for $1/2+ million accounts). So there is precedent for such a system. The political reality of expanding on this is a different matter. Any change would have to be gradual, because taxation is a huge intervention in market forces. i.e. to just suddenly stop taxing income, and tax wealth or tax consumption would very abruptly change the dynamics of the economy. But we don't have a political system that incentives 10, 20, 50 years down the road sorts of end goals. We have a system that favors the catch phrase of the week.