Countries that have no rich people are never prosperous. You can raise marginal income tax rates from, say, 60% to 70%, and maybe that's a good idea overall, but it doesn't get rid of billionaires. High-tax Sweden has as many billionaires per capita as the US does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Swedes_by_net_worth
If you raise the marginal tax rate to 99%, then you get rid of billionaires, but you also kill your economy. There are all the failures of communist countries, of course, but even the UK tried this during the 60s and 70s. The government went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the IMF. Inflation peaked at 27%, unemployment was through the roof, etc.:
If you raise the marginal tax rate to 99%, then you get rid of billionaires, but you also kill your economy. There are all the failures of communist countries, of course, but even the UK tried this during the 60s and 70s. The government went bankrupt and had to be bailed out by the IMF. Inflation peaked at 27%, unemployment was through the roof, etc.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_IMF_Crisis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_Discontent