[zanny]

> you devour one of them and redistribute to the other 9, thats OK simply because the 9 recipients benefit?

Because obviously anyone proposing progressive taxation wants the terms to be "once you make a million dollars, all assets are seized and you are left to die in the woods, filthy elitist". Definitely not anything, even in the most extreme case, like "oh hey, you made a million dollars this year, that is demonstrably enough to not only fund all your needs and probably 99% of conceivable wants but also those of at least a dozen family members or more", so we are going to take every cent you make beyond that and redistribute it to those who don't have enough to even fulfill their own needs".

That is not eating the rich. It is obviously way too redistributive and would catastrophically disincentivize wealth creation and probably wreck the economy, but even in the most extreme case it is not locally "devouring". You still have a million dollars a year, enough to afford almost anything.

And thats just the unreasonable super-communist perspective. A real world progressive tax rate that optimizes for societal wellbeing would probably be a NIT that guarantees at least 30k and caps your income in the hundreds of millions with the bisection at the peak income happiness threshold thats around 90k per person.

I'm sure "devouring" all the income beyond 500 million dollars of someone who made that much this year will certainly destroy them, at least as much as deep poverty and systemic inequality is definitely not destroying the minds of the children and the health of the parents living in it today.