The ultra-wealthy's what? Their wealth is held offshore, their income is more than offset. You want to tax yachts? They'll buy jets. Taxing the symptom is playing tax law whack-a-mole (and the mole is rich and the hammer is limp, and the mole pays the hammer's mortgage). Tax the cause. Their rent-collecting mechanisms are much more immobile and difficult to hide.
> and they still get to be ultra-wealthy afterward.
Not a justification.
> We already do it
Doesn't mean it's right.
> the discussion is only “how much?”
It's not right to presume we can take from someone just because they can afford it. The only policy that makes sense to me is to reclaim the portion of the public good that is privatized via rent seeking. If someone got ultra wealthy by their blood, sweat, and tears, as long as they did so without collecting rent or causing negative externalities, I don't care if they can buy and sell Andromeda.
> and what to do with the money.
The reasonable thing to do with the money is to offset negative externalities (pollution, climate change, illiteracy, etc.) and equally redistribute the rest (citizen's dividend).
> (Incidentally - the rich have been winning this argument for a long time, as their effective taxes fall and fall and fall.)
The only way to reverse this trend without massive deadweight loss is a tax on land rent.
> On the other hand, proving that a specific piece of income is “economic rent” - I think that’s intractable and only produces loss on both sides. It’s a fight to the death for the accused, a hill they’ll die on. The idea is appealing at a surface level but I can’t see any way forward with it.
I disagree. The simplest form of economic rent is that on nature. A tax on the unimproved value of land, and a carbon tax are simple, straightforward examples anti-rent, anti-externality measures.
