[AMerePotato]

In my opinion, the amount of risk taken on has a large role to play in the vast difference in outcomes. Starting a company would be like buying a bunch of lottery tickets. For every winner, there's a huge number of people who lost a ton of money or are just generally doing worse than if they had chosen a stable career. The key benefit of being an employee is protection from this risk. Contract work could be in between the risk/reward of a startup and the risk/reward of an employee. An employees could get paid significantly more doing the same kind of work on a contract basis, but a lot still choose the least risky option of being an employee. As an employee, you're not getting a million dollar check, but you do get consistency and a timely paycheck.

A fair wage doesn't necessarily have to be tied to the amount of money the founder receives.

[jjeaff]

Sure, risk reward is one way to look at it. But some people already have a bunch of money or family with money to fall back on. So they aren't really taking as much risk as say, someone who started out poor and has nothing to fall back on. In other words, risk is relative rather than absolute.

[AMerePotato]

Yup it's more like risk of investment. Someone wealthy can risk a lot more than someone poor can without worrying about putting food on the table. They can afford many more lottery tickets and the poorer person is probably gonna have to play it safe as an employee for a while. That's a good case for evening the playing field with something like UBI. No one gets a check according to how much they need the money