This is where my libertarianism come roaring to the fore. To me one of the most dangerous arguments for a public policy is "for the greater good" so much miser

This is where my libertarianism come roaring to the fore. To me one of the most dangerous arguments for a public policy is "for the greater good" so much misery and suffering has been inflicted on society by groups and policies based on "the greater good" Further your position requires one to assume the government will inherently spend the money better than allowing a person to keep the money to invest in a business or blow it on expensive cars yachts (and yes even though things are a net good for society) , your scenario of 100million just vanishing is not realistic as people will move investments in response to losses like that. We can however look at history and see clearly that government does not always spend money wisely Just look at this comment thread for the cognitive dissonance the surrounds government spending. People asking for CA to justify more taxation in the face of their failure of public policy are simply meet with arguments that even more money will solve the problems You see government programs are never bad, and never fail because they are bad policy, it ALWAYS because we did not tax or spend enough, no matter how many times this pattern is repeated it is never enough. They could steal 100% of all wealth over 30 Million, and when the problems are not resolved (and they wont be) the supporters of the programs will demand more money, say taking all wealth over 20, then 10, then... Remember the original income/wealth tax only applied to the top 3% of incomes now it applies to 50%... Government taxation on income only ever expands, that is the big problem here.