You seem to forget that given the way taxes work, eventually, anyone, with any amount of money, will be considered "wealthy" because we'll keep running out of other people's money.

You're wealthy, or the definition will change to include you. The spice must flow.

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harimau777 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Running out of billionaire's money would be a good thing[1].

If they don't have money then they can't buy elections and aren't insulated from the consequences of their actions.

[1] Note: I don't really think we should literally take all their money. Just enough to reduce some of the power imbalance.

	▲	philipallstar 27 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		All their "money" is in business ownership percentages. It's not money.

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Barrin92 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

>because we'll keep running out of other people's money.

that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, for two reasons. For one, as even Paul points out in the piece, a wealth tax below what's practically a risk free return on capital (~5%) doesn't eat into the capital stock, it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases.

Secondly, there's no monotonous historical direction towards higher wealth taxes, in fact the opposite. We're living in an age of low wealth taxation, with only half a dozen countries or so, if I'm not mistaken, imposing one at all.

	▲	sokoloff 5 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The risk free rate of return is usually only a point or two above inflation, and I’d argue that real wealth, rather than nominal wealth, is the true measure to look at to determine whether someone’s position has improved, stayed flat, or decreased.
	▲	philipallstar 22 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> it simply means wealth grows slower, but still increases But what does this mean? If you have a load of money in some companies, that's helping to fund their activities, and the companies' share price goes up a bit, you haven't gained any money. And you won't gain any until you sell some shares, which is already taxed.