Here's a possible plan: tax every share of stock owned for more than 1 year at 0.1% of it's current value at COB on 12/31. The tax is due every year. So that would be $1000 for every million in stock assets. But exempt any stocks that are part of 401k plans or IRAs with values less than 10 million dollars.

Any good? Workable? I could agree to it, and I'm not exactly poor.

That's certainly workable. Publicly traded stocks are easy to value, but is it fair to single them out? I haven't spent any time looking at the details of how people's net assets might be valued for a wealth tax, but I know enough to know that it can get awfully tricky, particularly at the higher levels. A lot of assets are not so easy to put an exact value on, like private business interests, real estate, works of art, etc. The California Proposition that failed actually excluded real estate, since there is already a state law limiting taxes on real estate (Proposition 13 from many years ago). Then there's also potentially issues with hiding assets in someone else's name, etc.

Income is easier to get right, although that can be manipulated as well, particularly at the higher levels.

I'm not necessarily blanket opposed to a wealth tax, but the devil is in the details. I've never given it much thought, but I'd prefer to see some sort of graded percentage, similar to income tax. With the California Prop, that was not the case. It was a flat 5% on anyone with net worth over $1B. But the tax looked to apply to the full net worth, creating a loophole where someone with a net worth of $1.01B would be subject to the tax and have to pay a $50M tax, while someone with "only" $0.99B would not be subject to the tax and would come out better off overall. That's not a good design.

We have such great wealth in this country, we should be able to provide basics like health care and some sort of minimal housing to our populace. But instead we're giving tax cuts to billionaires while cutting benefits for the not so well off. As I saw someone write the other day, "We are solving the wrong problems".