unrealized capital gains ≠ income.

But they are part of your net worth. If somebody who becomes richer every year, passively, has "no income", then the definition of income does not match people's intuition about what constitutes fair targets for taxation.

There is a good case to be made to tax wealth rather than income, which comes closer to people's intuition about what's fair.

Excellent observation, and this is the entire problem.

They pledge their unrealized capital gains as collateral for billions in loans, spend the cash, and pay single-digit interest instead of income tax.

Repeat until they die, then their heirs inherit the shares at a stepped-up cost basis, so the gains are in fact never taxed.

Again, I’d ask you to engage with this:

> I wouldn’t call that their fair share.