"Suppose you start a successful startup in your twenties..." Suppose you are a spherical cow of uniform density... "...and then live for another 60 years." .

"Suppose you start a successful startup in your twenties..." Suppose you are a spherical cow of uniform density... "...and then live for another 60 years." ...having converted your stock to greenback dollars and never making another dime... Suppose you exit your startup with $10,000,000 in stock, that it (or your portfolio containing it) grows by 5%/year, and that you pay 1%/year wealth tax. After 60 years, your value will be about $100,000,000 and you will have paid about $25,000,000. If I'm doing the math right, you could have ended with $190,000,000, meaning a 1% wealth tax would have theoretically cost you $90,000,000. initial_value = 10000000 growth_rate = 0.05 tax_rate = 0.01 value = initial_value total_growth = 0.0 total_tax = 0.0 for y in range(0, 60): growth = value * growth_rate total_growth += growth value = value + growth tax = value * tax_rate total_tax += tax value = value - tax print(y, value, growth, tax) print(value, total_growth, total_tax)