UPDATE
Rather than assuming Musk paid corporate tax rate every year I looked up personal long-term capital gains tax rates over the period. Even with that lower capital gains tax rate, he still comes out about 4 times wealthier; which is more in line with my prior recent estimates than the factor of 50 which assumed he paid 35% corporate capital gains.
END UPDATE
When I saw Elon Musk retweet this video of his “net worth” vs hair growth since 1996…
It provided the critical column of a spreadsheet I wanted to put together to convince him he should endorse my proposed replacement of the 16th Amendment with a net asset tax.
Here it is for your peer review.
The specific net asset tax rate I used in the spreadsheet is the 30-year Treasury rate in the prior year. The rationale is that rational government investments, if any there be, should have long-term paybacks such as human capital as in Total Fertility Rates of the middle class.
I originally proposed such a tax reform in an attempt to get capital markets to start supporting commercial launch services. So it is no coincidence that I’m targeting Elon Musk as an example of a capitalist that should support it.
https://ota.polyonymo.us/others-papers/NetAssetTax_Bowery.txt
I could have done a similar calculation for the total national wealth which would have blown people’s socks off – including people who are afraid of having their economic rents “expropriated” by a wealth tax. On the contrary, by shifting the economy to favor guys like Musk, demand for such lazy investments as land value would have gone up dramatically as well – and even lazy investors would be better off.