Buying real estate or land would go towards your net worth, and putting your money into private companies would be a problem. But the IRS knows how much you are worth, and I wouldn't want to go to jail for tax evasion.
And I was thinking more along the lines of not making this retroactive, but it might work to speed up the process to apply it across the board.
But, let's say that Bill Gates gave some incredibly large bonuses to the workers at Microsoft. I bet some of the programmers of Windows 3.1, 95, NT aren't millionaires. And I was thinking more a log the lines of keeping the money within the company, just spread it around more. If you devide Gates' wealth (69.75 bil/3.4 mil) among every person in Oregon, they would only get $20386. Most people would spend it, and given enough time, I'm sure that someone would create something that everyone would buy.
People might quit, or be able to get better jobs. They might be able to start their own business or volunteer to make the world a better place. They might be able to do things besides working.
I think the figure your looking for is the top 10% of the richest Americans own 70.9% of the wealth.
http://www.osjspm.org/101_wealth.htm There would be a revolution like the French had if the top 1% held 99% of everything. But, we are heading that way.
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Originally Posted by http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/37/11624
But some of the wealthiest Americans, including Warren E. Buffett, George Soros and Ted Turner, have warned that such a concentration of wealth can turn a meritocracy into an aristocracy and ultimately stifle economic growth by putting too much of the nation's capital in the hands of inheritors rather than strivers and innovators. Speaking of the increasing concentration of incomes, Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, warned in Congressional testimony a year ago: "For the democratic society, that is not a very desirable thing to allow it to happen."
Others say most Americans have no problem with this trend. The central question is mobility, said Bruce R. Bartlett, an advocate of lower taxes who served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. "As long as people think they have a chance of getting to the top, they just don't care how rich the rich are."
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http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/...bes/P61243.asp
Inflation would be a problem, but the government would collect more taxes and take money out of the system by hopefully paying down the national debt.