Let's say that there was a 1% wealth tax on all wealth over $1b. So Bezos would have to liquidate say $1b each year for that tax.
Yes, he'd have to sell Amazon stock. That would feed into the stock price of Amazon in terms of increased liquidity of the stock, but it has zero effect on the operations or growth or income of Amazon itself.
Arguably it would have little or no impact on Bezos' activities. He would still be running Amazon, he would still be working to make it grow etc.
What would change is that over time, the wealth would be distributed via the items funded by that tax.
This is highly questionable - the idea that a dollar of tax is equivalent to a dollar of wealth distributed rests on the assumption that elected officials can deploy the money efficiently.
I’m not claiming that government can never do this - clearly nation building has been done before.
This is what the article disingenuously(?) leaves out.
If a society wanted to deplete billionaires, it could put a wealth tax on just the dollars above and including the billionth dollar that an individual nominally owned.
The idea is that anyone who isn't a billionaire wouldn't be affected. Making this tax rate be 1% has the added advantage that you can call it "the 1% tax", because it would only apply to (a small subset of) the top 1% of richest people.
I don't know how many Americans became multi-billionaires by founding companies in their twenties, but here is a list of billionaire founders of internet companies:
Reducing billionaire wealth, or limiting its growth is st stated aim. Piketty and like minded economists argued for it directly. The political proposals (eg Warren's) were also straightforward.
It is a red herring, but money always is when it comes to politics. They all have stuff they want to fund.
By Picketty's math, 2%-2.5% is roughly break-even. That is, average billionaire wealth will grow in proportion to the economy & wages. Less, they will grow more slowly relative to the economy. Above 2.5%, millionaire wealth will decrease, relative to the size of the economy.
It has long been my impression that eliminating or reducing billionaires is the primary goal of wealth tax advocates other than those whose advocacy primarily consists of sharing memes on social media. Raising revenue is largely a red herring.