And if so, who should we hand over the power to? If we tax assets, it will be given to the government, which historically hasn't been all that great at allocating capital.
These people say they don't want all this power centralized to certain individuals, will in the next breath claim that government should seize assets after a certain amount. They want centralized control, they just want their preferred political party to be the ones with it.
The shares are sold to whoever's buying, so the billionaire can pay the wealth tax, to the government.
This would essentially be the same as when someone wins a car on a game show. The car is taxable income, which means that they sometimes have to sell the car to pay that tax.
> the government, which historically hasn't been all that great at allocating capital
The only way anyone gets to be a billionaire is by hoarding wealth. It's a catastrophically bad allocation of capital.
Do you realize the billionaire has no saying in how much money he “has”? He just owns stock in a company he built from ground up. It’s us saying that that stock has a certain value. It’s us saying the owner is a billionaire. We are the ones making him a billionaire.
And that, together with heavy regulation, is why we have the present situation where young people can't stat families because they can't afford a home. Not the example I would like to follow anywhere else.