Reading this you would think billionaires are all sitting is swimming pools full of money like Scrooge McDuck. The vast majority of these assets are in the form

Reading this you would think billionaires are all sitting is swimming pools full of money like Scrooge McDuck. The vast majority of these assets are in the form of the ownership of companies. The only way to unlock that wealth is to force sale of these assets. This raises several question. Who should control these companies. Government? Now politicians and civil servants are running your economy. Plus you don’t actually get any extra public revenue to spend on anything. You just confiscate industries you now have to operate. So ok, let’s sell these shareholdings. To who? If we’re ending large scale private wealth, where are the buyers? I suppose you might dilute ownership to more private capital but is that actually better? You’re just arbitrarily changing ownership. Seizing one persons assets and selling it to someone else. Some of those people will do better at it that others and what do you know, we’ve got billionaires again. Except now they know you’re going to take their assets off them. What effect will that have on stock prices, investor confidence, entrepreneurship? I don’t think this has been thought through very well. Or at all. The way to fix taxation is to, er, fix the tax system.