There is a disconnect between those two ideas. The tax doesn't need to reduce their wealth. Wealthy people generally continue to make money, usually without even having to try or work.
As a random example, Elon Musk was worth roughly $50B 10 years ago, vs about $500B today. That's a $450B gain in wealth, the vast, vast majority of which was untaxed in any way.
We're not talking about taxing $450B from Elon. We're talking about taxing a small percentage of that.
Then I don't understand why most of the rhetoric behind this idea focuses on reducing inequality. If Elon Musk was now worth $100B instead of $500B, how does that make any practical difference?
I’m genuinely confused.
No one is advocating for pure wealth equality or communism. Just making the very obvious assertion that wealth has been concentrating more and more into the hands of a few and that we’re out of balance.
And again that’s just a number you tossed out for a single person. Literally one single person who would still be worth $100,000,000,000.00. One hundred billion dollars...the amount that Jeff Bezos was worth as the wealthiest person on the planet in 2017, just 8 years ago.
The simple reality is that wealth is more consolidated now than at any point in the US’s history. The wealthy are allowed to amass billions and billions of dollars without paying taxes on it, while the rest of us shoulder the burden.
Something has to change.
Bluntly, you’re misunderstanding the basic math of a wealth tax.
Consider that we already tax unrealized gains on real estate as an annually paid tax. The suggestion is to do the exact same thing for other types of assets. That’s it. It’s very simple, and we’re not talking about making billionaires poor. Just trying to make it so that people can't go from $1B to $100B net worth and pay no taxes, while the rest of us fork over 25%+ of our measly 6-figure incomes every year.