The mechanism underneath is fiscal sequencing: debt service consumes budget share until income and consumption taxes can no longer close the gap without collapsing the base, so wealth becomes the last accessible surface. France hit this exact sequence in the 1780s; decades of war debt made normal taxation politically impossible, so the crown attempted forced loans and levies on landed wealth, which accelerated rather than resolved the crisis. The democratic diagnosis is accurate, but it's downstream of the debt arithmetic.