Who said "we have to tax them, or else they leave"? That doesn't seem to be what anyone is saying. The issue is that this group is threatening to leave if they are taxed.

I agree you should want to avoid having an income disparity like this, but we are where we are. The goal of this tax is to help correct that disparity.

Then the next question is why does wealth, in practically all industrious countries seem to distribute disproportionally and not uniformly?

One argument could be that maybe entrepreneurial personality traits aren't normally distributed, and unless you find a way change people's personalities in mass, the imbalance in wealth attraction will remain inherent.

Then you might ask, if that's true, do you I want to enforce equality, potentially dragging down the economy to mediocracy (for example many stagnating European economies) or maybe accept that current nature does not meet our societal desire for equality.

your post has a mistaken question.

The actual question is: "If we tax tax them, will they leave? (losing the planned tax revenue/backfiring)"

It is pretty easy to avoid state taxes - just move to a different state.

Taxing billionaires isn't "necessary to raise enough tax revenue." Total personal income in the U.S. is 26 trillion annually: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income. For the most part, that's real money that reflects goods and services in the real economy.

The increase in wealth of billionaires in 2025 was $1.5 trillion: https://americansfortaxfairness.org/billionaires-1-5-trillio... Most of that isn't even real money--it's people betting on AI. (As an aside, is the government going to give huge tax refunds when the AI bubble bursts and all that "wealth" disappears?)

If the U.S. just taxed people the way they do in Germany we could raise trillions in revenue without resorting to tricks like one-time wealth taxes. The focus is on billionaires because Americans want a German-style welfare state without German-style taxes on the middle and upper middle class.

Countries in which the income disparities ARE so high are also the ones where the "poor" are the richest. They just feel poor in comparison not in absolute terms.

70K a year is poor in California, but top 1% rich in almost any country in the world.

Low income disparities are countries like Albania, Afghanistan, Armenia to name the first three with below 30 GINI income.

>Organizing your country with more sustainable growth where income disparities aren't so high means you don't have this problem to this extent.

Sounds like US vs Europe. Having redistributive policies funded by taxes works well until your most productive people flee for a country that doesn't, and you steadily lose ground to competitors economically.