Nah. The budget impact of taxing MacKenzie Scott $8B per year would be basically imperceptible. Not only would it decidedly not fund any new spending, it would only reduce the 2021 budget deficit (a cool 3 TRILLION dollars) by 0.2%! Even in pre-covid times (2019), 8 $8B in new revenue would've reduced the annual deficit by a mere 0.8%. Sure, if you taxed all of them at a similar rate, you'd tackle a bigger chunk of the deficit, but you couldn't even balance the budget. And you'd bleed them all dry within a decade or two (far more quickly than these fortunes are made), at which point your revenue problem would return with a vengeance.
The ultra rich have unfathomable amounts of money, sure, but the only way to sustainably fund a large welfare state--as is evidenced by the tax policies of every Western European nation--is to tax the absolute shit out of the middle class. Keep that in mind the next time someone says they're going to fund trillions in new annual spending by 'taxing the rich'... They may keep their promise, but when the golden goose is dead, they'll be knocking on your door!
The thing is if you count what your employer pays for health insurance as a tax (because that would be a tax in say, Canada) you'll find that many Californians already pay more tax than Canadians.
So we already tax the middle class, just opaquely, and without the benefit of healthcare not being tied to work (which would enable more entrepreneurism).
