One thing that I think gets lost in all of this is just how little money the richest people actually have, in the big scheme of things. According to [1], "The

One thing that I think gets lost in all of this is just how little money the richest people actually have, in the big scheme of things. According to [1], "The combined net worth of the 2013 class of the 400 richest Americans is $2 trillion". Certainly $2tn is a lot of money, but if the US Government were to "take" all of that (assuming, of course, no massive stock market crash when it's flooded with all of their holdings), it wouldn't even cover 2013's US government spending for one year ($3.45tn [2]). To cover the US 2013 full-year budget, it'd take roughly the combined net worth of the 800 richest Americans. Edited to add: This is just federal spending, it completely ignores state taxes, of course. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_400 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_members_of_the_Forbes_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budget https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_bud...