You should perhaps listen more closely. There are a wide array of programs proposed by people who are advocating for greater taxes on the wealthy. Universal healthcare, free education, a larger social safety net and investments in green energy are a few of the big line items being constantly and loudly discussed. Those programs are intended to improve the majority of people's lives. You can interpret that as "more equal" if you want.
That we hear "tax the rich" in isolation these days speaks more to the lack of the prompting question than progressives' dedication to the response.
If tomorrow everyone was given all of those programs, but the income distribution stayed the same as it were today, would everyone go home satisfied or would they discover new things that needed providing?
After everyone has healthcare, will there be people who desire a more-flattened society? Possibly. There are a lot of different people in the world with a lot of different ideas. But that's a separate conversation.
...of course? These programs would (imo) make a better world, but not a perfect one.
Just because you accomplish Goal #1 doesn't mean that you can't continue on to strive for Goal #2.
Don’t confuse how politicians sell something with the mechanism. The rhetoric changed with the rise of celebrity through wealth. ‘Soak the rich’ is a sales slogan since it’s easy to punch up, and no one has any sympathy for a guy like Bezos. The same sort of rhetoric is going on right now with lines like ‘billionaires made $2t during the pandemic’, or the headline for this article. the implication is that they actively made moves that increased the amount of dollars in their bank account by literally taking money from the poor. The reality is that they continued running their businesses according to the rules of the game and the value of their business holdings is up.
In that context ‘soak the rich’ should really just be seen as a proposed rule change to the game.
EDIT: the_gastropod's comment also under this parent is a great short summary of this issue. I second their recommendation of "Capital in the 21st Century"
That's about 1.1% of the net worth of Jeff Bezos.
I indicate this not to imply that Jeff Bezos should be solely responsible for fixing the Flint water supply, but rather to indicate that the resources are there, the problems are there, and what we lack is the will to move resources to fix public problems (be that via taxation or charity). Even problems we know will carry a larger cost moving forward... Flint is a town with a population of nearly 100,000, and a high-lead environment can basically guarantee higher costs in education, health problem remediation, and possibly crime.
- Historically, capital grows faster than the economy at large (generally around 5% annually)
- Steep marginal tax rates help disincentivize high pay (e.g., if the top marginal rate was 90% like it was during the Eisenhower administration, a corporation would see much more of its money go to employees if it gave its lower income workers raises vs giving its exec team bonuses. The purpose of raising taxes on the über-rich isn't necessarily to generate revenue, it's to set up incentives to narrow income disparity, by forcing corporations to distribute money efficiently.
- High top marginal income taxes coupled with a steeply progressive wealth tax would also disincentivize hoarding of capital, and would further "squeeze" the wealth distribution to less problematic levels.