Progressive _income_ taxes tax higher income people more and higher income people less. This has a <1 correlation with wealth (richness) and poverty. You can

Progressive _income_ taxes tax higher income people more and higher income people less. This has a <1 correlation with wealth (richness) and poverty. You can control a lot of assets with relatively low income via debt (the interest of which doesn’t isn’t taxed, frequently), and can have relatively few assets with high income (a sports player, for example, in part because their careers have intrinsically low shelf lives due to physical requirements). Related to that last point, progressive income taxes also charge people differential tax burdens based on the “density” of their earnings, even if they have the same lifetime earnings. (Compare a football player who makes all his money from 20-25 to a surgeon who makes the same amount of money from 30-65. Because the football player makes more money per year, he’ll pay higher taxes than the surgeon even if they make the same overall income. This is despite the fact there is 0 ability of the football player to maintain his income at 65.) The above poster would probably view capital gains tax increases as also doing the same thing. Additionally, these policies are often paired with other social spending (like Cal’s phase-out of asset tests for Medicaid, that privilege the older, asset owning strata at the cost of younger, income rich but asset poor strata). LVT, wealth taxes, or even sales taxes do not have these features and, perhaps coincidentally perhaps not, have been beyond the pale politically for a century.