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The long answer is yes, with an if, and the short answer is no, with a but.The relevant enabling sections of the Constitution are in:the Tax and Spend Clause, (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1,) which also contains the requirements oforiginating with the House of Representatives,must be spent on paying for either the debts of the Federal government, for the “common defense,” (military that defends all of the individual States collectively,) and “general welfare of the United States,” andmust be uniform throughout the States (so, no taxing California residents higher than Florida residents).The 16th Amendment, ratified in 1913, which permits an income tax. Specifically, it states: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”The Necessary and Proper Clause, (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18), which has been interpreted by the Supreme Court in McCulloch v. Maryland in 1819 as “Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.”Additionally, the Constitution puts some limitations on this taxing power:Article I, Section 2 requires direct taxes to be apportioned to the States according to respective numbers; how those numbers are determined was modified by the 14th Amendment, Section 2 to fix the whole “black people are only 60% human” problem.This same concept is reiterated against in Article I, Section 9, Clause 4, which reads: “No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”Article I, Section 9, Clause 5 prohibits the Federal government from taxing “Articles” moving around between the States; essentially, Congress can’t take a cut of interstate commerce. Free trade between the States.I can never stress enough the concept of the nation at the time that the original Constitution was drafted to be a weak federation, essentially slightly more centralized than say, the European Union. The individual States saw themselves as little independent countries unto themselves, not as provinces of a single nation. The “Anti-Federalist” faction was deeply against the proposed Constitution for that very reason — they saw it as a step towards losing their individual national sovereignty towards a centralized government.There is still tension today between the same two factions: one who sees our form of government as barely one step above confederacy, with the individual States basically in a loose coalition with a mutual defense pact, and another that prefers the concept of strong federation, with a more centralized national government and weaker individual sub-unit States.Based on these enabling sections of the Constitution, their limitations, and the document’s history, it would depend on precisely how the Federal government would tax that wealth.If the Federal government is taxing wealth in the form of capital gains, carried income, or the passing of wealth to subsequent generations, the 16th Amendment plainly enables such laws as constitutional, because these are income “from whatever source derived.” They are income because wealth is transferring hands; someone is literally receiving money as income.Indirect taxes are also fine. Indirect taxes are things that depend on some event or transaction taking place. That’s why there can be a national sales tax, such as the gasoline tax. Right now, every time you buy a gallon of gasoline, 18.4 cents goes to the Feds. 24.4 cents if you buy diesel.The Feds can levy tariffs on out-of-country things you want to import, and excise taxes on things you want to ship back out again. If you want your wealth to go anywhere, Uncle Sam can (and will) take a cut.So, if some hypothetical representative or Senator in Congress, let’s call her Lizzie Nerraw for no actual reason whatsoever I swear, were to propose a 14,000% tax on luxury yachts that cost more than $1,000,000 apiece every time one is sold, serviced, refueled, inherited, or imported from Dubai, that would probably be constitutional, and a way of capturing wealth from certain very wealthy individuals.A marginal income tax of 150% on all income carried from interest-bearing accounts that exceeds $1,000,000 per year in income would probably be constitutional, and a way of capturing wealth from certain very wealthy individuals who receive most of their income from carried interest.These might not be good ideas, but they’re arguably not unconstitutional, at least.Direct taxes, on the other hand, are taxes on present wealth that do not depend on some event or transaction from taking place. Taxing someone’s net worth, for example, would be a direct tax. Property taxes are the most common form of direct tax.And direct taxes at the Federal level, as it turns out, are where the excrement impacts the atmospheric mass mover.This is where it’s helpful to go back to the Constitutional Convention and the drafting of these provisions limiting Congress’ power to tax.Understand, one of the primary reasons that the predecessor document to the Constitution, the Articles of Confederation, completely failed was that the Continental government had almost zero power to actually raise any revenue. It was flat broke in 1787. It could request money from the States, who were under no obligation to send it. You can guess how many of them voluntarily did.To make this new proposed federalized system work, Congress had to have more power to raise revenues. That’s where the whole Tax and Spend Clause itself came in.Then a bunch of Southern plantation owners just about lost their minds over this, because they had a lot fewer people owning a lot more property individually than their more populous Northern neighbors. A national property tax could mean that Southern land-and-slaveowners might get nailed with a huge individual tax bill; one slaveowning guy in North Carolina might end up paying fifty times as much as some non-slaveowning guy in Massachusetts, because his property would be worth fifty times as much.So, they got Article I, Section 9, Clause 4 put in to make sure that they had to be taxed in direct proportion to their population. Plus, they got that whole 3/5ths “Compromise” thrown in for good measure. All the power of having tons of population with only a handful of people actually owning things! Once this clause got put in, some of these guys were really sold that this would be great for the South and totally worth the other downfalls of ratifying the Constitution.Take this piece of a letter recommending the new Constitution to the governor of North Carolina from three of the representatives to the Convention:We had many things to hope from a National Government and the chief thing we had to fear from such a Government was the Risque of unequal or heavy Taxation, but we hope you will believe as we do that the Southern States in general and North Carolina in particular are well secured on that head by the proposed system. It is provided in the 9th Section of Article the first that no Capitation or other direct Tax shall be laid except in proportion to the number of Inhabitants, in which number five blacks are only Counted as three. If a land tax is laid we are to pay the same rate, for Example: fifty Citizens of North Carolina can be taxed no more for all their Lands than fifty Citizens in one of the Eastern States. This must be greatly in our favour for as most of their Farms are small & many of them live in Towns we certainly have, one with another, land of twice the value that they Possess. When it is also considered that five Negroes are only to be charged the Same Poll Tax as three whites the advantage must be considerably increased under the proposed Form of Government.(Side note, we really tend to leave off just how much really shitty racism was incorporated into the Constitution by design and the reasons for a rather significant part of its provisions. Constitutional originalism conveniently forgets all about this when taking a textual interpretation approach. But I digress.)So, anyways, the only way the Feds can levy a direct tax on wealth is if it is directly levied proportional to each State based on population. That is, 50 people in New York can’t pay any more for all their wealth than 50 people in Mississippi. This will heavily favor states where there are reasonably high populations, but where only a handful control the bulk of the wealth.This has never been really litigated and is pretty poorly legally understood as a result. There is very little case law on the subject. Only two stand out as meaningful that I’m aware of.The first is Hyalton v. United States, 3 U.S. 191 (1796). That first number means it’s only in the third volume of the cases reported by the Supreme Court Reporter; in other words, it’s one of the very first cases ever decided by SCOTUS. Hyalton ruled that a tax on carriages was not a direct tax, but speculated that a tax on land would be.The second is Pollock v. Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, 157 U.S. 429 (1895), which held that taxes on income were direct taxes. This case caused an uproar in the legal field, who widely detested it and felt it was entirely wrongly decided. The case was overruled by the adoption of the 16th Amendment for that very reason.While the Congressional Research Service states that Pollock overruled Hyalton, Chief Justice John Roberts relied on Hyalton in 2012 in upholding the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act as a tax, so… there you have that.Extrapolating from Hyalton and assuming it’s still good law, as best I can figure, a tax on real property (typically how wealthy people hold their wealth,) or other asset-type propery is probably a direct tax that would only be constitutional if it were directly proportional to the States according to the most recent census.Parsing out what the hell that would mean in terms of who would get taxed and for how much would probably make Andrew Weill a very rich man.Thanks for the A2A, Habib.

No, the trickle down theory has never worked. The super rich and their cohorts have been using this argument since the mid 1980s. Do some research; look up the facts. Have workers and the middle class progressed significantly in the last 33 years? No. The working class has regressed and the middle class has barely moved ahead. BUT the top 10% (and especially the top 1%) have literally climbed off the charts. The rising tide of wealth over these years has lifted their yachts, but hasn’t lifted our boats. Our experience tells us this is so. The money does not trickle down; it goes into their bank accounts. You don’t need to listen to opinions. Just spend a little time to research it for yourself.

Not certain about ‘’excotic’’, but if you look at ‘’exclusive’’, there are a few contenders. To my knowledge, the hardest club to get into has to be the Yacht Club de Monaco, located in Monte Carlo.You must be introduced by two sponsors, both of them society members of the YCM. Next you need to fill out an admission form signed by the sponsors and the applicant, accompanied by a letter of introduction from the proposer, explaining the motives. Twice a year, HSH Prince Albert II, the President of the YCM, convenes a meeting to examine applications. In other words, royalty determines your fate.I personally think the term ‘’excotic’’ is mostly abused and used in the wrong place in any event, and can easily be replaced by ‘’expensive’’, ‘’rare’’, etc. With yacht clubs it really only counts how hard it is to get in - birds of a feather etc.