Did people clutch their pearls also when "Doctor" Marcus Welby did ads?

Wealth taxes sound logical but fail in practice for reasons that are structural, not incidental.

Modern billionaire wealth is not a pool of cash but unrealized appreciation in stock, private equity, and assets held inside foundations, trusts, and holding companies that never die and never sell.

The wealth is real in terms of power and influence but does not exist in any form that is liquid, personally owned, or straightforwardly valued.

Asking someone to pay 5% annually on a private company stake or a foundation's art collection requires first agreeing what it is worth, then finding the cash to pay the bill, neither of which has a clean answer.

Europe ran this experiment for decades. Sweden, Germany, France, Austria, Finland, Denmark and others all introduced wealth taxes and most have abolished them, citing capital flight, administrative chaos, and the fundamental impossibility of consistent valuation across asset classes.
France's ISF drove thousands of wealthy residents abroad before Macron scrapped it in 2017 explicitly because it cost more than it raised. Germany's was ruled unconstitutional in 1995 on valuation grounds alone.

The deeper problem is that the effective tax rate on a correctly structured fortune is already close to zero before any wealth tax is contemplated. You borrow against your portfolio to live, generating no income.

Everything is owned by immortal entities that never trigger a realization event. The rate on zero is always zero, and a wealth tax on assets that are not personally owned, cannot be objectively valued, and cannot be liquidated without market disruption is not a revenue solution. It is a political statement.

His job will be done by AI anyway soon, then he'll have ample time.

16 and under do not vote.

Everybody is now a 'manager' of half a dozen AI agents.

Facebook Home / HTC First "Facebook Phone" — 2013 — discontinued within weeks;
HTC First price cut to $0.99.

Internet.org / Free Basics — 2014 — banned in India 2016; largely abandoned.

Oculus / Reality Labs (VR/AR/metaverse) — Oculus acquired 2014 ($2B); rebrand to Meta 2021 — cumulative operating losses $83.5 billion over 21 quarters as of Q1 2026; budget cut ~30% Dec 2025; 1,000+ jobs cut Jan 2026.

Horizon Worlds — 2021 — missed internal user targets; part of Reality Labs cuts.

Libra renamed Diem (cryptocurrency) — 2019 — consortium partners exited; sold off 2022.

Portal (video-call smart display) — 2019 — discontinued 2022. .....

He's talking about E.T. :-)

...that they are losing money already because people create their own AI stock-photos instead of buying them from ANYBODY.

If I need a photo of an elephant playing the flute, I don't care how it was created.

Not in the EU at least, they can change their mind as often as they want, but as they themselves said many, many times:

Brexit means Brexit.

As long as there's a veto, they won't become a member again.
First, because SOMEBODY would veto their ass and second.

NOBODY will ever want a UK member with a veto.

We learned our lesson.

Also, the EU that the UK left is not the EU from today, the EU finalized tons of regulations and rulings that the UK had been blocking for DECADES.

Good riddance!

"Purchase the government of the United States"

He plans to buy Mars.

" because he's arrogant enough to believe his DNA is special and a gift to be shared with humanity."

Everybody would be going bald early on and need hair transplants, like him.

Especially one who does, let's say the 'Roman' greeting.

While reading the comments, I saw that lots of commenters DID actually RTFA!
Never seen before!

"This is the biggest challenge that developed nations are facing."

Hardly, this is the SOLUTION to AI and robots "taking our jobs."

Small wonder, if you are a teen in a sub-Saharan society and you see on your $50 Chinese Android phone how the teens in developed countries live with their iPhone 17 Max Pro Giganticum with fake photos of a Mercedes S on Facebook, small wonder they might light the charcoal grill in a small unventilated room.