General Discussion

Wealth isn't income.

My wealth is a lot greater than my income. Some's inheritance, but savings, interest/dividends, appreciation is where the action is.

And a lot of that is in non-cash assets. You take $3 trillion in stock and liquidate it over 6 months, who's going to buy it? All the people with enough money would be selling their own stock so the only way it would get bought is if people that don't have that much money buy it, meaning the price would have to first plummet. But then it wouldn't net you $3T in revenue.

Same for property. How many $5 million homes would sell and settle within 10 months?

And if you're only targeting the top 0.5% that value loss would extend to them, as well. And people like me, with a base salary under US median but who has my retirement account mostly in stocks. (Oh--and it wouldn't affect just me, but every retirement account, from Mass. to CalPERS.

That kind of thing happened in 2008 and 2009 with consumer real estate. Flood the market with assets for sale ... And the selling price will be set by the buying public or the asset won't be sold. We waited, got this house, then 3 years old, at a 62% discount from the previous tax appraisal (which was actually the same as comps). Paid $0.38 on the dollar. Every $100,000 in value, we paid $38,000. The REIT made some money on flipping the house, but the institution caught holding the bag lost a ton of $.