[sumtechguy]

Most assets do not 'grow in value'. Take a building any building. Sell it today. Sit on the cash for 50 years. How much building can you buy in 50 years? Not nearly as much.

The only reason we are even talking about wealth tax is because of the crazy unable to be funded programs some people are proposing. These programs sound nice on paper until you do the math on them. Then they realize they can not pay for it at all.

Remember wealth != cash value.

[SmooL]

This is a ridiculous comparison - of course pure cash depreciates, but we're talking about the literal opposite of that - an asset.

Take a building, any building. Sit on the building for 50 years. How much is building worth? Probably way more.

[sumtechguy]

I would posit that most assets are in relation to other real assets worth about the same. If I sell that building and buy the one that is say about the same right next to it am I going to 'pay more'? Cash wise most certainly. Utility wise not so much. Do not confuse cash with value. It is easy to get them mixed up.

[thundergolfer]

Not the only reason at all. So many people are concerned with inequality beyond its connection the USA’s inability to fund public goods.

[logicchains]

>Not the only reason at all. So many people are concerned with inequality beyond its connection the USA’s inability to fund public goods.

"Being concerned with inequality" doesn't give people the right to go and arbitrarily expropriate other people's assets.

[enragedcacti]

> The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States

We absolutely do have that right in the US.

[dragonwriter]

No, the federal government does not have that power; Art. I, Sec. 2, Cl. 3: “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers”. A wealth tax (or other real or personal property tax) is a direct taxes not apportioned as Constitutionally required.

State governments may or may not have that power, according to their own Constitutions (most, I would imagine, do.)

[jakelazaroff]

Cash, specifically, doesn’t grow in value — but most ultra-millionaires aren’t sitting on tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in cash. If you’d held onto the building for 50 years, it’d probably be a very different story.

[sumtechguy]

My parents have owned their home for about 50 years now. If they sold it today and turned around and bought another house they pretty much could get about the same sized house. The about 20k they paid for it 50 years ago in some places would not even get you a down payment.

Wealth is not the same as cash value. It is easy to miss the distinction. We may be agreeing? We also already have a 'wealth tax' on many items already. We call it property tax.