Here’s the problem with the idea of confiscation of the entire wealth of the Forbes 400 (or whatever): Most of their wealth isn’t liquid, it is actually tied up on usually illiquid assets, such as businesses and real estate.
Turning that wealth into money requires a buyer for these assets... which, once we’ve seized the wealth of the 400 supposedly wealthiest people in the US, will be in short supply. The value of those assets, dumped into market where $1.5 trillion in wealth has been seized... would likely go down rather a lot. So I think that, overall, the government would obtain less than $1 trillion in net gain on seizure of those assets and conversion into money.
The central problem in the US are the twin deficits: The federal (and state) budget deficits, which are running well over a $1 trillion per year, and the current account deficit, which includes trade deficits and investment deficits (ie, greater foreign investment in the US than US investment off-shore), which has been running over anywhere from $200B to $700B+ per year for years now. That means that $200 to $700+ billion in US wealth is leaving our shores per year and not coming back in - whether in return for what we export, or as foreign investment in the US, or tourists coming here to spend money, whatever.
While other nations (including the US) have had periods in which they’ve run fiscal deficits of the size we are now running (relative to GDP) and recovered, no other nation in human history has been able to sustain a current account deficit of the size we have for as long as we’ve had it. Sooner or later, the party we’ve been funding with Other Nations’ Monies will come to a stop.
That money will come back. Eventually. Our daughters and grandchildren will get it as “sex workers”. See what happened in Germany after WW1.
The whole game will continue, but only as long as the USD is the reserve currency of the world, allowing us to print it, willy-nilly.
Knowing that the Chinese have no special love for us, and not being so foolish as to continue to lend us money ad infinitum, I suspect that they have a plan “B” for us, that we won’t particularly care for.
The tip-off to me is their massive accumulation of gold, and their declaration that the “world needs a new reserve currency.”
Hmmmmm.... Like the Gold-backed Yuan, perhaps? Ruh-roh.