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It's an interesting problem, and I'm convinced this is going to be one of the largest issues facing society in the years to come, but at least I cannot think of any easy solution.
On the first hand, I broadly believe that wealth inequality is not a problem in and of itself - it makes no particular difference that someone else has much more than I do, as long as I have what I want and need myself. To an extent where it is a problem, in that wealth allows for the concentration of power, I've always thought that it was merely a symptom of the immutable fact that increasing technological progress allows for the increased centralization of power. If there was someone capable of expropriating the wealth of the billionaires, it merely means that that someone else has expropriated their power - the government can exert much more control than any private capitalist ever could.
On the second hand, empirically the median person really does not like experiencing wealth inequality, especially in the modern social-media driven age of envy. It's easy enough to say that if everyone was an enlightened buddha, then wealth inequality would not be a problem, but it's much like saying that resource allocation would be easy if everyone simply got along - simply impossible in practice. If it were possible to burn value in order to satisfy people's lizard hindbrains and improve social cohesion, I'm becoming more convinced that this would be a good thing, even if it were not optimal in terms of resource allocation.
On the third hand, it really does not seem like there's any level of reduced inequality that would actually satisfy the median person without ruinous consequences. Complaining about billionaires and trillionaires is a useful Schelling point, but in practice I do not see that "mere" centimillionaires worth 999 million are any less targets of jealousy - in practice most people are just envious of anyone with more than them, while believing that they're all fully deserving of what they themselves have. As others write below, there are many countries which already implement wealth taxes and/or have lower Gini indices than the US, but it doesn't seem to have meaningfully reduced the inherent envy that people feel towards those with more than them at all.
I feel like there's an empathy gap going both directions left-and-right with this kind of thing. In terms of economic value, the left is fine with doing just that (though arguably the left isn't fine with being fine with just that - hence why a lot of the beliefs are dressed up and obfuscated as not being fundamentally about envy), destroying value for the purpose of increasing equality. And in terms of criminal punishments, the right seems to be fine with slaking the bloodthirst of those who want to impose suffering on violent criminals, even possibly at the price of more suffering than necessary to innocents, as well as less optimal resource allocation. I don't think we know exactly why, but irrationally or pre-rationally, people really really commonly really really hate inequality and really really love imposing suffering on violent criminals. It seems reasonable that society be structured to satisfy these preferences to some extent, as one of many competing priorities that any functioning society must balance. Of course, the devil's in the details in how much we prioritize these preferences over others.
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