[rayiner]

Put yet another way, Bezos’s $220 billion represents 94% of his “wealth.” And what it represents is the right to a stream of dividends out of Amazon’s profits decades into the future. It makes no sense to compare that to income the government is taxing this year. The government is already going to tax that money in the future when Amazon earns it, and then again when Amazon pays it as dividends. The government can’t make those future profits materialize in the present by taxing Bezos. Obtaining stock from Bezos would give the government a share of Amazon’s future profits. But the government already has that right—it can simply tax those profits when Amazon earns them. Talking about a taxing Bezos’s “wealth” as if it’s money that’s sitting around is just a shell game.

[slively]

I didn’t say anything about taxing them, just framing the amount of wealth they have by comparing it to federal revenue. It’s too much even if it isn’t “realized”.