Exactly. Let's say you are born with a $20M trust fund and never work. You never get taxed on it (yes, I know sales taxes, property taxes and so on..., but we

Exactly. Let's say you are born with a $20M trust fund and never work. You never get taxed on it (yes, I know sales taxes, property taxes and so on..., but we are talking income taxes). If you play one year in the MBA make the same $20M all that seame year and get injured and cannot work anymore, you get taxed much more than someone making the same $20M during their life time. The issue is that there is not an easy way to tax people on their wealth (which is really what the state warranties through police, justice, infrastructure, defense, etc...). So we use income as a proxy for wealth (which is a really bad proxy and benefits disproportionately people that are already wealthy). There is an argument to be made that you where already taxed when you made that money, but the problem is that you don't stop benefiting from the state warranties after making that money. One of the issues with taxing wealth, which is fairer in my opinion, is that it is very difficult and prone to gaming evaluating anyone's wealth. Not even talking about how politically viable it would be to propose taxing 2% of each american's wealth each year instead of a much larger percentage on their income. Personally, I think it would the right thing to do if viable, because the tax would be proportional to how much the government and its institutions are warranting your property (aka, how much you have at stake).