The understanding of wealth that leads to conclusions like these is based on a misapprehension. You don't "have," wealth, you are responsible for it, and in pa

The understanding of wealth that leads to conclusions like these is based on a misapprehension. You don't "have," wealth, you are responsible for it, and in particular, for growing it by investment in productive assets. If you don't, it literally evaporates. The wealth tax argument is like seeing a transport truck and saying, "look at all the metal, rubber, and fuel that person has, surely they would not be harmed if we made them contribute some of it to give to our supporters!" without thought to what it carries, the purpose it serves, or whether it's still useful after being hobbled. There are some people who seem to think being rich is like Scrooge McDuck swimming in a pool full of coins and treasure. If you want to know what wealth taxes look like in practice, we have wealth taxes today, cities impose them, and they are called property taxes, and they have a huge impact on the viability of businesses and the lives of seniors, families, and renters. They are complex dynamics. If progressives want to recapture money from wealthy people they could capture it indirectly on a greater scale through reducing the impact of globalization by enforcing tariffs in national economic zones, favouring domestic industry, and facilitating regional growth instead of scavenging it. Modest luxury taxes that are not distorting or prohibitive, or designed to engineer culture captures the most via a progressive federal sales tax (VAT). People who say this won't sufficiently deprive billionaires of their privilege would be tipping their hand, as if that's the true goal, why bother to use the legalisms of a wealth tax as a pretext at all?