The retiree example is intended to demonstrate that a wealth tax is inherently perverse, regardless of who is targeted. Savings are just deferred expenditure and debt is just expedited expenditure. When you tax wealth, you expedite consumption.

Another way of thinking about this: A wealth tax is like inflation, except assets are also devalued alongside your savings. Which means the wisest strategy is to consume now, save nothing, invest nothing.

50 dollars tomorrow may be more useful to you than 100 dollars today if today you'd only buy useless crap for it but tomorrow there is a brilliant investment opportunity.

The market bit comes in when you have stuff like artworks. You have a canvas with splodges on. Is that worth $0 or $1m? Who knows till you sell it?

Or startups - is your loss making one a 0 or a $1bn? You could have work arounds for tax but it complicates things.

> Wealth tax has nothing to do with markets [..]

(Genuine question) how would one determine the value of something for taxation purposes if there's no market involved?