This post completely ignores that even safe investments are going to earn a return over 1% on wealth. So even a founder who liquidated all her stock and parked

This post completely ignores that even safe investments are going to earn a return over 1% on wealth. So even a founder who liquidated all her stock and parked it in a prime money market fund would have earned 1.3% over the past year — and that’s at a time of near record low interest rates. A founder with any sizable wealth and a long time horizon (>15yrs) would earn much better than 1%. Even conservative retirement calculators given such a horizon will steer you toward a real return of 3%, or 5-6% after inflation. That’s an estimated return in stock heavy index funds. Someone with most of their net worth in a successful startup — precisely the person Paul frets about — will do much much better than that for at least several years earning startup returns. (Those not so successful won’t have much wealth to tax.) Basically I think it’s a little silly to wring hands over the compound impact of a wealth tax and at the same time give no acknowledgment to the compound returns available to the average long term investor to say nothing of the very wealthy. A wealth tax has a real impact but it’s more about dragging down returns on wealth than eroding wealth per se. Inflation has a very similar compound impact on any given sum. Further, Paul does not acknowledge the benefits to a person AND a tech company of being based in the US over other countries, or past crucial investments by our people in basic research enabling many if not all YC and other Valley startups.