The wealthy aren’t paying their fair share and that is something that needs to be corrected. The arguments in favor of progressive tax systems are countless.

It’s important to note that taxing wealth isn’t the same as taxing income. But you can do both and the US has a very well established system for doing so: income when earned and wealth when transferred to the next generation. Unfortunately, both of these systems have been gutted.

I’d love to see these both get their teeth back. Pretty simple really: (1) make progressive income tax rates apply to all income sources and decrease income exclusions/deductions and (2) lower the wealth tax exemptions and clamp down on tactics used to skirt around the exclusion amount (primarily family partnerships). This is basically just returning to policies the US had from about 1950 to 1970, which also was a time of exceptional middle class growth. It’s really not breaking new ground and it’s a proven, sound way to generate widespread economic success while also battling greed and inequality.

We could go a step beyond and do a value-added tax system too, which effectively taxes consumption, but that’s another topic entirely.

There is a very real logistical problem with directly taxing net worth. It’s extremely difficult to actually assess, especially when you’re targeting people with extremely expensive lawyers. They also very directly encourage wealth flight, which has happened in other countries that have tried them. They can also be avoided by accounting trickery, shell companies, and all kinds of bullshit. It’s not me that owns $1 billion in Amazon stock, it’s a shell company in the Cayman Islands that happened to buy a yacht. Sure, you can unwind all that, but enforcement takes a lot of time and resources.

There are other much more efficient tax schemes out there focusing on consumption that can’t be easily escaped.