2 ms·

The vast majority of wealth in this country is real assets, good luck "relocating" land and buildings :) Even if they do leave, someone still owns it.

• qubex 9y ago
  That is also fraught with difficulty. Most wealth (not GDP) is indeed in real assets... and these assets are obviously owned. They're typically owned by companies, not by individuals (directly), which is why in the response I gave below I mention foreign shareholders. If somehow you mange to exclude them you have dozens of other loopholes and contractual mechanisms to contend with, the most obvious being leasing by the property company of a real asset owned by a bank, wherein the lessee in turn sublets the asset out. If you get past that you have to deal with the fact that in a very real sense these assets constitute the bulk of wealth because their prices are high, and that if you make it extremely difficult (or undesirable) to own them the price will plunge as current owners try to sell off their assets and get cash to take out, and nobody with the relevant criteria to own them has enough funds to buy them. That in turn would wipe trillions off wealth, hundreds of billions off GDP, and send the banking system into a new systemic cardiac arrest demanding of bailouts in because the assets underlying their outstanding loans no longer cover the risk they're exposed to.