This is Extreme Wealth Inequality: How Does One Fix This?

[bhikkhu]

39. It is controversial

...and it only takes a few minutes with google to find strong arguments for both sides, but the basic concept is that wealth (as based on resources) is finite, that wealth attracts and creates more wealth, and that over time you get larger and larger concentrations of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

I think currently that's a bit obvious, and the main mechanism of "redistribution" has been economic collapse - where an economy with all the wealth at the top is like a pyramid balanced precariously on its point, doomed to fall.

Taxing income is limited to the moment of the earning or creation of income, and once "income" becomes "asset" (wealth) then it is beyond reach and may be held onto for a lifetime and then passed freely on to the next generation. Its all a very slow process, but an estate tax provides a means to tax assets which are otherwise somewhat locked away, and a tool for leveling the playing field and reducing inequality where it is actually most fair - at least if one advocates a meritocracy, rather than a hard-stratified society where both wealth and poverty are determined by one's birth and persistent through life.