I don't get it.

My house is an asset on my balance sheet. I haven't sold my home or rented it out, it has no direct or indirect income to me. The house has some theoretical value, which is assessed by the government, and on that value I am paying taxes. Is this not a tax on an "unrealized gain?"

Why can't stock and other similar asset classes be treated similarly? I can always pay my homeowner's tax, why couldn't the In-n-Out owner pay a wealth tax? Clearly they're deriving a lot of value from owning stock such that they're able to enjoy a much higher standard of living, clearly there is some ability to pay.

I don't buy into this idea that this disincentivizes private ownership, much less make it infeasible. This is also done elsewhere and it seems... fine? People in Norway seem to still start companies.

Nice and clear article, however while I was reading it, I was wondering how the estate tax handles such scenarios. When this owner of In-N-Out dies, how does that tax get applied?

I think that a more reasonable approach should be to tax capital on capital movements (E.g. using any of your wealth to borrow money or using your property as collateral) - capturing the events of when you are 'accessing' your money without actually selling anything and making any profit. Apply it to everyone - not just billionaires.

Because unfettered capitalism creates runaway wealth compounding for the winners, wealth taxes are one lever to balance the game a bit.

Only one person enjoys the end stages of a monopoly game where that person has cornered the properties and money flows to them unimpeded.

I’m not informed enough to have an opinion on prop 40, but it’s disingenuous to say that she would have to sell $250m of her stake in in-and-out. She could take out a loan against her stake and pay the tax with the proceeds, then pay off the loan over time with the income from her ownership of in-and-out.

Privately-owned companies would become worth less. The value can't be high enough that the income stream is more than the taxes on the value. (That's a change because, at zero interest rates, a steady income stream is worth a lot. But we're leaving that era, so the future value of a steady income stream is going down anyway.)

Oh! Well if it’s going to difficult/inconvenient for the ultra wealthy then maybe we should just not do it /s

Dear god, how much wasted space to whine about how “who will think of the rich people?”.