How would a local "wealth tax" work?

Danae Columbus seems worried here that LaToya might change her mind on the whole "take from the rich and give to the poor and all that kind of crap" thing. I'm not sure why she would worry. Anyone in New Orleans politics raising the kind of money Cantrell has clearly is already taking enough from the rich that she wouldn't want to hurt their feelings too badly.  Still, Columbus is right to point out, taxing the rich is a popular idea. And one thing we know about LaToya is she does like to be popular.

Another option that the populist Cantrell could consider is a tax on the rich, which is growing in popularity nationwide, according to the New York Times. In a recent poll by the online research platform SurveyMonkey, a majority of voters favor such an effort. Even Republicans support presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren’s proposal to increase taxes America’s wealthiest based on net worth. Many Democrats consider it a “moral issue.” Sixty-two percent of those surveyed agreed that government should try to reduce inequity. The survey suggested a 2 percent tax for those with wealth above $50 million.

Proponents like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez consider the tax as a way to resolve inequity problems not being adequately addressed by government. Inequity continues to be an on-going issue in New Orleans, a city where a large number of under-educated, non-homeowners are stuck in low-paying tourism industry jobs. But that doesn’t mean Cantrell would want to alienate her former Garden District and Uptown base who would be natural targets. New Orleans has always been a city with wide contrasts between the haves and the have-nots. A wealth tax based on any income level could trigger a new exodus to the suburbs, especially from older tax-payers.

Okay but explain to me about how a municipal "wealth tax" would even work? Does the city even have the authority to implement such a thing?  What a radical idea. I would love to hear more. Thanks to Columbus for bringing it up.

Still, I'm not sure what the point is since nothing like that is even on the table.  Presently we're having a fight over how much of the existing tourism tax revenues should accrue to the city rather than to the various tourism facilities and promotion boards who currently receive a lion's share. 

This week, the mayor appeared on the Advocate's podcast for a brief interview about this. It would relieve Columbus to know that nothing Cantrell said there sounds particularly socialistic. In fact she took great pains there to emphasize the fact that she wishes the tourism cabal nothing but success. "I come from tourism," she says alluding to her time working for the hotels. Completely oblivious to any sort of class consciousness, LaToya talks about her time as a hotel front desk and housekeeping grunt implying that the interests of such are completely aligned with those of plutocrats like Stephen Perry who exploit that subsistence labor to arrange six figure salaries for themselves.

If Cantrell does manage to wrest a "fair share".. or at least a fairer share of Perry's bounty away from him then maybe, in a way, we could consider that a kind of "wealth tax."  Maybe it's a wealth re-appropriation.  In any case, it's still apparently different from the full communism Columbus is proposing. I do hope she explains this further.