Perhaps the argument is less that the rich are too rich than it is that the government is too poor
Each policy disaster, it would seem, must be revisited every 30 years or so. Debates one thought long settled — over deficits, inflation, socialism — are revived, as memories fade, the original participants die, and a new generation takes up the same discredited ideas, untainted by actual experience of their consequences.
The wealth tax bandwagon has acquired such momentum that the rich themselves are clambering aboard. A group of 18 U.S. billionaires, George Soros among them, has just written an open letter demanding the imposition of such a tax, arguing, fetchingly, that “America has a moral, ethical and economic responsibility to tax our wealth more.”
By contrast, the 70 per cent marginal tax on income over $10 million that Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has championed — nearly double the current top rate — would raise just a tenth as much, according to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, and possibly much less. But it is not obvious why it is wrong, in itself, that a small number of people should get stinking rich. It is clearly objectionable if they did so by illicit or unethical means — but then it is the means itself, not the wealth, to which we object. And it would be in poor taste, at the least, if they spent it all on themselves. But that is not how the great fortunes are typically disposed of — it’s physically impossible to spend more than a small fraction of it.
Yes, we already have a kind of wealth tax, in the form of municipal property taxes — and they’re a notorious mess. They conform to none of the usual principles of good taxation, being neither simple, nor efficient, nor fair.
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