ObjectivityIncarnate

But collateral isn’t used as part of a transaction unless the loan is defaulted on.

let “unrealized gains” be taxed if they were ever used as collateral for a loan.

This simply makes no sense as a concept. Collateral is something that you tell the one you’re borrowing from “you can have this if I fail to pay my loan back”. If the loan is repaid, literally nothing happens to the collateral, and it plays zero part in the actual transaction. There is zero non-arbitrary reason to tax an asset just because it was used as collateral.

Also, all home equity loans would fall under this definition, as well.

you get everyone a baseline income of $75k is by taking it from the billionaires

Actually, no. That’s a hypothetical for a reason; the entire net worth of all billionaires combined (assuming a magic wand could convert the net worth figure into an equivalent amount of cash, literally impossible in reality) wouldn’t get everyone to $75k for even a single year.

Over the long term, there really isn’t. Outside of a government imposing tyranny-tier control over everyone’s wealth, wealth inequality happens naturally, and inevitably, and the gap widens similarly.

What’s more important is making sure that even the poorest among us can have a decent standard of living. After all, if you waved a magic wand and now everyone in the US, for example, was earning $75,000 a year minimum, no one would be in poverty, right? And yet the size of the ‘wealth gap’ between the wealthiest and the $75k ‘minimum earners’ would effectively be identical; the gap between $0 and billions is basically the same as the gap between $75k and billions.

Toppling the wealthiest just because they’re the wealthiest isn’t going to solve any of the actual problems (especially when politicians get bribed for relatively-measly five figure sums, etc.).

There will always be people who are the smartest and/or shrewdest and/or most ambitious and/or luckiest, in a population. “Just get rid of the people who currently have the most wealth” is extraordinarily naive.