> You're wrong that it would prompt a stock-market crash.
It certainly would.
Where do you think those billionaires would get the money to pay the tax? It’s not like they have billions of dollars in cash somewhere; they’d sell assets. Those assets are predominately stock. Selling off that much stock at once would absolutely disrupt the markets.
> Selling off that much stock at once would absolutely disrupt the markets
...don't do this.
The combined net worth of America's billionaires is about $7tn. Let's assume half of that is in public stocks. That's $3.5tn. That's about what retail investors alone bought "in the first six months of 2025" [1].
Given the fundamentals of the companies wouldn't have changed, this would be a massive opportunity for institutional investors to deploy capital. (If you didn't do the tax in a revenue-neutral manner, you'd free up tonnes of capital from Treasury demand.)
One might expect a dip in companies where a single billionaire holds a large fraction of the float, e.g. Tesla, Amazon, et cetera. But broadly speaking, these aren't numbers which–even if compressed to a single year, which isn't how you'd pass such legislation–would cause a crash.
There are good arguments against super taxes. Crashing the stock market isn't one of them.
Well most talk of taxing billionaires involves capital gains taxes, not one time wealth taxes, and the serious lefties care more about nationalizing their assets than taxing them.
But yeah, the imaginary tax proposals invented in this thread may or may not work out, i wouldn't call anything about them "certain" though
It certainly would.
Where do you think those billionaires would get the money to pay the tax? It’s not like they have billions of dollars in cash somewhere; they’d sell assets. Those assets are predominately stock. Selling off that much stock at once would absolutely disrupt the markets.