
A wealth tax taxes capital itself, not income from capital. That distinction destroys civilizations. Think about what wealth actually is. Wealth is factories, tractors, shipping fleets, software firms, apartment buildings. Capital goods that make workers more productive. When you tax a fortune at 2% per year, the owner doesn't skim froth off a bathtub of cash. He sells productive assets, or he stops accumulating them, or he moves them to Zug. France ran this experiment. The ISF wealth tax drove an estimated 42,000 millionaires out of the country between 2000 and 2012, and Éric Pichet calculated it cost roughly twice the revenue it raised. Sweden scrapped its wealth tax in 2007 after watching Ikea's founder park his money in the Netherlands for decades. Twelve European countries had wealth taxes in 1990. Four remain. The deeper problem is calculational. Taxing capital shortens time preference across society. You punish the man who plants an orchard and reward the man who throws a party. Savings shrink, the capital stock thins, and wages fall, because wages track capital invested per worker, not political sentiment. You cannot redistribute a factory. You can only liquidate it. Every wealth tax is a slow-motion capital consumption scheme, eating tomorrow's productivity to fund today's applause. The poor pay the final bill, in wages they never receive.
























