obviously there are lots of things wrong with this, but for the people who think its a good idea here are a few things:
1. This is a wealth tax, not an income tax. NO ONE makes a billion dollars A YEAR. even if you counted every form of income. as a wealth tax it would only work once. because once you have done it they no longer have more than a billion dollars worth of stuff and this tax would hit noone. you might get the rich SOB every once and a while if there is some new merger, or something new pops up and get a first timer.
2. pretty much all of that wealth is tied up in non-tangible assets. Elon Musk doesn't have eleventy billion dollars worth of stuff. he more or less has eleventy billion dollars of credit. There is no way for the government to even seize any of that.
3. There are 802 billionaires, worth 6.22 trillion. assuming each got to keep a billion dollars the government steals less than 5.5 trillion. that's not even enough to run our country for a year. so I am not sure what this accomplishes besides just being spiteful. assuming it actually worked with some type of mass asset seizure for the total amount
4. as soon as this tax was announced all of that "credit" would disappear. and you would have the IRS trying to pin people down for money they never actually had. Kinda like Trump being a billionaire, look at the financials and he "only" has a couple hundred million. pretty much every single one of them are the same. its money/value/wealth on paper only, or now digital. yeah the super super super rich will have a billion dollars of something, but it won't be anywhere close to the 802 you are hoping to hit.
5. what assets they do have worth anywhere close to that amount would be their businesses. Bezos with Amazon, Musk with Tesla/SpaceX, Waltons with Walmart, so on and so forth. Issue here is multiple: a) they aren't sole owners, so if the government wanted to seize the company they would be hitting far more than the top guys. b) they would be seizing a company, which would immediately lose most of its projected value once it was in the hands of the government, c) it would be nationalizing businesses which leads to the last point
6. the rich would likely just shut down most of whatever is creating that value. the government seizing or nationalizing a business is a sure way to run it into the ground and ruin the value of these mega corps, which would hit the average american super fast. Imagine no-Amazon, no Walmart. that is really what this tax would do, the rich would go on living life just as they are, but we are left suffering, or worse off, with nothing to show for it.
lawyers and CPAs would be the only people to benefit from this.
