re: For the people who want to seize and redistribute wealth from billionaires and ….

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Do you take their stock away or tax them so they have to sell stock to get below a certain amount?

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Cap gains taxes are how you get homeless "millionaires" who have to sell assets just so they can pay their taxes.

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To me it matters less how much wealth has so long as that wealth can't be used to basically buy our government.

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Well, that would entail laws about lobbying on the political side. Because, God willing, there will always be wealth. Whether that wealth comes in the form of a publicly owned company or an individual source doesn't really matter. The influence, or potential influence, is the same.

The problem is it currently exists, is someone like John Thune wields significant power. Yet he himself is not particularly wealthy. At the same time, he is having to maintain two households, one in Dakota and one in DC. He is included in circles of tremendous wealth in DC, and circulating in those social groups requires significant expense. Assuming he had to pay, he would be bankrupt in a week. But he doesn't have to pay.

He is instead invited as a guest on the dime of wealthy patrons or PACs. DC politicians view such things as a "perk." They falsely claim that such socialization has no effect on their politics. Watching Thune's political behavior tells a completely different story. It is fairly obvious to anyone watching that the man is owned by lobbying interests.

The solution would be to pay politicians in DC far more in salary, and concomitantly subject them to rules, such as those imposed on physicians accepting perks from pharmaceutical and medical equipment representatives in the private sector. No lobbying perks whatsoever. Investments/holdings would be placed in a blind trust. Penalties for breach would include expulsion from Congress.

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Dems equate it to a zero-sum game. For example, since Elon is "worth" $1.2T, that means he took $1 from 1.2 Trillion people.

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Completely skipping over the fact that wealth is not finite.

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Taxing people on their income or wealth is intrinsically immoral. It’s theft

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Perhaps, but getting immensely wealthy with government subsidies and contracts is sort of immoral as well. Must be a fair playing field.

The people who argue for this type of thing are economically illiterate and hopelessly poor. I once argued with one on another board who said it would stimulate the economy more if the government wrote everyone a stimulus check of $75 rather than reduced income tax rates by a few percentage points. Their reasoning: "If people had a free extra $75 they could actually spend it on something like a video game, but they aren't even really going to notice a difference if their income tax is reduced."

The left is fundamentally against capitalism. They believe that it’s a zero sum game. They believe that if you have a dollar, someone else loses a dollar. In some cases that’s true but not always and that’s just the way capitalism works sometimes. It ain’t perfect but it’s the best system there is.

And for them to think that a government taking your money is somehow “fair”, is comical. Why would it be okay for a government to take my money?