Yes, the problem that the rich can afford to find ways to dodge taxes is a big problem. I was not bringing the concept up as an actual solution, but in refutati

Yes, the problem that the rich can afford to find ways to dodge taxes is a big problem. I was not bringing the concept up as an actual solution, but in refutation of vaadu's claims about wealth distribution. If you could actually tax 90% of the income of the top 10% (where "income" means what we all would think of as income, not what the very best accountants fail to sweep under various rugs), and that income remained about the same as it is now, then it would rapidly pay down the debt. Is it possible to tax the most powerful people in world like that? No, probably not, as you said. It would require extremely smart people to write extremely smart laws while somehow keeping lobbyists from intentionally inserting tax loopholes, so good luck to us with that. Would the "real" income of the top 10% remain the same under such conditions? Hard to say, really. We don't really have the data to see how an economy would behave under such alien circumstances, so any predictions we make are bound to be based on ideology, and ideology is notoriously poor at making accurate predictions.