Attempts to tax people at 70% in France (even if it was marginal tax) went south very quickly. Incentive matters a lot because good work is really really hard.

Funny enough Gates seemed alluded to this on some interview I watched a while back.

2) Sure, I'm glad Bill Gates is willing to double that amount. Fun fact, Mr Gates, you don't have to wait until a tax is implemented, if you really think that way, you can donate money straight to the government: [0]

3) Taxes, at least in my lifetime, have always been a tax rate, not a number-of-dollars paid thing. If Jeff Bezos made 20 billion dollars last year, and paid only 1 billion in taxes, that would be a 5% tax rate. Living in NY, depending on my expenses and deductions, I pay upwards of 40% of my income in taxes. Yes, in one year, Bezos would have paid more to the tax pool than I ever would have, but it seems incredibly unfair that a person who has so much would be forced to give comparatively so little, especially since wealth hoarders could also afford to give a substantially higher percentage of their income without an appreciable quality of life change.

Granted, I know Bill Gates is, by wealth-hoarder standards, not too bad a guy. I don't think anyone here is arguing that he is, but come on; even if his dishonest framing of "being taxed 100 billion dollars" was true, which it isn't, it's not like his life would even change that much; he'd still be worth billions, he'd still have more money than he knows what to do with, he'd still be able to live a life of luxury on bank interest. Forgive me for not crying over his plight.

[0] https://fiscal.treasury.gov/public/gifts-to-government.html

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EDIT: The 20 billion Bezos thing is a contrived example. I do not know the tax rate for billionaires in NY; it was more a direct response to the "paid more in taxes than I'll ever pay" comment.