The problem is that when you get more for less, it kills the incentive to do more. This is a really glaring problem, and people go to really great lengths to either sweep it under the rug or hand wave it away.
Incentives don't disappear at some arbitrary level of taxation. I think you can have both sufficient incentives and more equitable distribution. The frankly obscene levels of wealth concentration we are witnessing suggest that there is a lot of room for refinement.
I do find it interesting that a lot of people (not trying to imply that you are one) bang on about incentives while also fighting tooth and nail in favour of weighting taxes toward earned income (derived from doing useful/productive things) instead of unearned income (derived from simply owning things).
I get that some people view all forms of tax as theft and while I appreciate their honesty, I simply can't take them seriously.
Your tax dollars just go into a cesspool of fraud, corruption, waste, incompetence, distribution to cronies. Money taken and spent badly feels like theft.
I'm an employee. I don't really benefit from doing more. When I do more, someone else makes money. In my experience that someone else is just as likely to lay me off for a cheaper worker as they are to give me a raise
The incentives our system produces are already really skewed, and it would be nice to see them skew the other way for once
It seems your complaint is a lack of recognition, and maybe redistribution would provide vengeance for this injustice. But that is different than "we ought to start giving raises to people who do less work, not more" which is what "skewing the other way" seems to imply.
I'll always liked this idea until trying to map it out myself, and always running aground, preferring performance bonuses instead.
You can't pay bills with equity, you will get paid a smaller salary, you need to be a mature adult to understand what "value can go to zero, and that is the game" entails, you likely will get diluted, your ownership stake isn't large enough to materially change the company, you cannot cash out whenever you want, having equity definitely doesn't make you rich automatically.
Besides, if you are savvy enough to be genuinely motivated by the idea of having equity, just go buy stocks in solid companies.
My observation is that if we leave our recognition up to people with power, they will choose to keep it for themselves or give it to their friends a majority of the time and that seems fucked up to continue to allow in a just society
> "we ought to start giving raises to people who do less work, not more"
This is completely beside the point, honestly
We should not use the most productive members of society as a measuring stick as though they were the average.
The average person does "way less work" than your very productive workaholic outliers, but that doesn't mean those people deserve way less.
Somehow we've all wound up being measured against the most exceptional people, instead of being measured against the average.
Keep in mind we're talking about a society where the median person only makes like $45k per year and exceptional people make many many times more than that
I'm not sitting here saying that some random shmuck should have Elon Musks income or anything, we could probably do better than 45k a year though
There are still human societies on Earth that still live the same way they did 2,000 years ago. Most people would not want to live that way, and therefore they need to rely on people who did/do more. The best way to rely on them is to make then rely on you too.
"Valuable work leads to good outcomes for everyone" is probably one of the slipperiest slopes there is.
I do find it interesting that a lot of people (not trying to imply that you are one) bang on about incentives while also fighting tooth and nail in favour of weighting taxes toward earned income (derived from doing useful/productive things) instead of unearned income (derived from simply owning things).
I get that some people view all forms of tax as theft and while I appreciate their honesty, I simply can't take them seriously.