Most of these billionaires' net worth are not liquid cash, they're in shares of the companies they founded/own. Jeff Bezos' $111B net worth, for eg, is mostly i

Most of these billionaires' net worth are not liquid cash, they're in shares of the companies they founded/own. Jeff Bezos' $111B net worth, for eg, is mostly in $AMZN stock. The way a 6% wealth tax accrues, if he does nothing productive with his money, he would have to pay $6.67B the first year...and then a similar amount every year after that. After 20 years, $111B would turn into $32B — a ~71% tax rate over that time period. And because most of his wealth is tied up in his stock, he would have to liquidate large portions of $AMZN to pay the yearly wealth tax bill. That kind of sustained mass influx of supply of $AMZN shares on the stock market would wreak havoc on its stock price, which would reverberate through retirement/pension funds. Few would gain from it. If you took all of Bill Gates' wealth, you could fund the US Federal government for about 8 days. Not 8 days every year, 8 days total, one time. If you took all of the Forbes 400 wealth, you could fund the federal government for about 8 months. The upside is 8 months of runway, and the downside is that you would destroy decades of created wealth (wealth is not zero-sum), a tide which has lifted a lot of other boats, particularly those of the upper-middle class.