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I think lesson here may just be that wealth tax, like corporation tax, will be most effective as an OECD-wide tax[1].

1: https://www.oecd.org/en/about/news/press-releases/2024/07/ne...

It would be harder to evade but that wouldn’t make it effective. If you hit your wealth creators too hard then they will cease being able to create wealth. Perhaps we have to stop seeing people as leeches and start questioning the government for poor investments.

The tricky part is a lot of wealthy people or companies make their wealth by extracting it from others. Typically those "others" are held captive in some way, so they have no choice but to pay.

Obvious example, tobacco, alcohol, motor vehicle repair. Non-obvious examples, hotels, vets, dentists, physical therapy. It's a HUGE problem in the US. Lots and lots of companies are huge, owning big parts of their domain, and they're extremely scammy. It's to a point where even big-name brands employ scammy techniques.

There's a path to tread on taxation, certainly, but it's far from either treating the wealthy as leeches or solitary engines of the economy.

There will be folks who want to avoid (or evade) taxation at all costs, but those may end up being a minority of ideologues. I think most will end up being more practical about it[1].

1: https://proudtopaymore.org

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