Absolutely ridiculous statement, it's not an accurate measure but it's definitely a good measure of money.

If you have 100B to your name even if it's post IPO stock in a possibly ponzi company that's your current wealth and you can easily convert a staggering portion of it into material realized wealth depending on several factors.

If I use cash to buy 1B dollars in Microsoft shares today, am I not worth a Billion dollars...?

The value may not be exactly convertible agreed so let's just force everyone to book all gains every year, and force sell a net percent of your share.

Not 100B$ of share, but 2% of 100 Million units of stock that you own. Why does this not work?

If I take 2% of your shares why can't it work the same way? I can then pick and sell it over the next year or two however I see fit, in case of govt they can slowly sell back this share to not affect the prices too much.

I am baffled by the fact that we have a tractible quantity and people call it hard to use to measure money.

Paintings, Jewels, etc. are what's truly the hard part of the wealth equation not the stocks, which is over 99% of what a wealthy billionaire owns.

I am not even considering pro or against taxes on billions people make but it's ridiculous to say stocks aren't money? Then what is money really... Currency is also traded, it's value can also go up or down....

even still, the government can propose a value, and if the owner thinks its worth less than that, the government can immediately confiscate the asset and pay that price as compensation.

if the owner thinks its worth more than what the government proposes, they can pay tax on the higher amount.

its still not that hard