According to:

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

The US debt is now at roughly 20 * 10^12 USD, while according to:

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21631129...

The top 0.01% hold assets of close to 6 * 10^12 USD (371 * 10^6 * 16 * 10^3). Expand to the top 0.1 % and the number is 11.5 * 10^12 USD. Note that the article is from 2014, at the time the debt was at ~ 19 * 10^12 USD:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_of_the_United_St...

So simply taking everything from the top 0.1 % (not the top 1%) would cover roughly half the debt. Seems like an additional 20% taxation might make for reasonable down payment, though.

Not advocating it, but what if we just confiscated their total wealth? "Eat the rich" and all that.

Hard to do legally, and if you do it illegally it tends to collapse the rule of law and result in investors fleeing.

Far better would be even small levels of property tax, land value tax, and (important for 21st century) intellectual property tax. IP licensing fees are a key component of how many big businesses shuffle money into low-tax jurisdictions.

Oh, and kill the tax secrecy havens. This is already starting to happen, but it's a very long slow process.

Unrest do collapse the rule of law for a shot time, but there is a problem. If investors start to flee then they stop being the top 1% earners in that place. Sooner or later the allure to earn money overrides the fear of loosing, and the cycle continues.

In a book called Debt, the First 5000 years they explore this concept and uses it to explain why nations tend to independently concludes that you must have laws that regulate lending. If not you get periodical unrest where the populace go and burn down the debt ledges, and in some historical places this happened as often as once every few years. Collapse of the law don't permanently scare away investors.

Not to say that unrest and collapsing the rule of law is a good thing.

In the Bible I think this was called a "jubilee"; debt was forgiven, slaves (some) freed every 20 years. I guess that in a high mortality society this makes a lot of sense - 90% of human assets will expire in that time period in any case so if you have the bad luck to live for 10+ years in slavery you deserve a break!

Just my opinion but I see this as leading to a depression. Who then manages those resources that were confiscated, many of which are likely the drivers of production (machines, mines, etc.) It would also place an imperative on the most creative to hide any assets they produce leading to a reduction in both the size and number of job producing enterprises.

I am not however, in anyway against a larger tax on the wealthy or at the very least the elimination of tax loop holes.