With the freak show that is the political side of the debt ceiling debate and the desire on one side to raise taxes, I've been thinking about wealth...
Wealth is more than resources because--at a certain point--the resources you get from wealth far exceed those you can actually use. I mean, you can eat $10 in donuts if you really, really want to, but there's no way you can physically consume $100,000 in donuts before they all go bad.
And--if you did--it would probably kill you.
So, there's a point in the scale of wealthiness where wealth becomes wealth for wealth's sake or a means of competition with similarly wealthy people...
The other thing that tends to happen above a certain point, is a huge increase in mobility.
So, a "rich" person who makes $150,000 a year is probably tied to a particular address because that home and/or the workplace is the source of their wealth. Someone who's got $1.5 million a year probably has multiple addresses and--if they have the liquid funds--can literally move almost anywhere in the world.
Which is why--at the wealth-for-wealth's sake level--many taxes and legal liabilities become a matter of emotional connection with some group and not something practically enforceable. Simply having the means to pick up and leave makes it so they can change the rules for themselves by simply changing their location.
That's why places like Dubai, Monaco, Liechtenstein, and other tax-havens exist. People there get phenomenally wealthy because of the portability of wealth and the mobility of the rich.
So, taxing the hell out of people that are "rich" (i.e. non-mobile rich) can get a lot of money until such point their means of getting money goes away. For example, you tax the hell out of a Doctor, their costs go up--or try to until they hit the limits on insurance--and then they either become specialists of some sort so they can charge more or they just get out of the practice and work in some other capacity to pay off their loans.
(Yeah, MD's aren't really rich, for the most part, because of the cost of their education.)
If you try that with the mobile rich, they leave the country, hire tax lawyers, and use their money to protect their money.
Works the same way with corporations. Unless they are tied to a particular, physical location--like a mine--you're ability to tax them is solely based on their skill with the tax law and their attachment to a particular place/government/people. And the more you make that attachment painful, the more you end up with a company that--legally--exists only in a PO Box in a tax-friendly tax-haven somewhere.
All the while, leaving people screaming about the "tax loopholes" and trying to carry water with a spaghetti strainer.
If you wanted an honest fix, you have to give these people a reason--an advantage--to "be attached" to one group or one location, get them integrated and then manage the taxes so both they and the people around them profit.
But, that's just my opinion.
