Wealth inequality is the intended effect of that incentive structure though, not a negative one. The idea being that those who provide more to society - more unique skills, better creations, etc should be more wealthy. If you put wealth inequality in these terms, I think you'll find most people - especially those who've been exposed to other systems are fairly accepting of it.
> Personally, I think the extent of inequality we permit is far far more than is necessary to incentivise wealth creation. People would still want to be rich even if the alternative didn't suck.
I see where you're coming from but I think there's definitely a fine line to tread here - if you push this too far you could argue that what you're doing is actually just serving to slow down the march of progress in society and make those poorer individuals lives much worse.
Think about it like this - would you rather be upper class, one of the richest people in the world just 200 years ago or middle class today? The medical and technological advances are so enormous. To hamper them in any way would arguably make many lives much worse. And what you're suggesting poses that risk. We could lose out on many such advances.
To use an extreme example: Sure, maybe you don't feel that medical company shouldn't be raking in so much from a unique patented drug - but what if their next creation with that money is a cure for cancer. These are the risks you take when putting such limits on this system.
Now, that's not to say I'm strictly anti-regulation or anything, just that it's a lot more of a delicate balance than many people make it out to be. You need to be careful to keep those top performers extremely motivated to do more. And if you do things like have a 90% tax rate on the uppermost bracket like some places have, well, don't be surprised when you wind up killing off that kind of thing.
>Wealth inequality is the intended effect of that incentive structure though, not a negative one. The idea being that those who provide more to society - more unique skills, better creations, etc should be more wealthy.
Wealth inequality is the mechanism by which the incentives are supposed to work, but the goal is still the incentives, not the inequality itself. If it were possible to achieve the same without inequality that would be better.
But you say they "should" be wealthy, are you suggesting a model of morality that prefers rewarding merit rather than improving outcomes (even in the long term)?
>To hamper them in any way would arguably make many lives much worse. And what you're suggesting poses that risk. We could lose out on many such advances.
Or we could find out that the excessive inequality was unnecessary, and that we've been giving people shitty lives for no good reason. Or we could even find out that happy people are far more productive than people terrified of poverty. These possibilities are just as much a risk as your suggested outcome.
Personally, I'm inclined to think it would be far better for technological progress to ensure every person has the resources to educate themselves as much as they want without worrying about survival. And I don't think you need to offer people loads of money to give them an incentive to try and cure cancer.
> it's a lot more of a delicate balance than many people make it out to be. You need to be careful to keep those top performers extremely motivated to do more.
At a certain point, inequality can start to act against motivation, because the richest will continue to live in luxury almost regardless of what they do. Higher taxes (and ideally wealth taxes rather than income taxes) can actually encourage them to keep expending effort so they can maintain their standard of living.
> Personally, I think the extent of inequality we permit is far far more than is necessary to incentivise wealth creation. People would still want to be rich even if the alternative didn't suck.
I see where you're coming from but I think there's definitely a fine line to tread here - if you push this too far you could argue that what you're doing is actually just serving to slow down the march of progress in society and make those poorer individuals lives much worse.
Think about it like this - would you rather be upper class, one of the richest people in the world just 200 years ago or middle class today? The medical and technological advances are so enormous. To hamper them in any way would arguably make many lives much worse. And what you're suggesting poses that risk. We could lose out on many such advances.
To use an extreme example: Sure, maybe you don't feel that medical company shouldn't be raking in so much from a unique patented drug - but what if their next creation with that money is a cure for cancer. These are the risks you take when putting such limits on this system.
Now, that's not to say I'm strictly anti-regulation or anything, just that it's a lot more of a delicate balance than many people make it out to be. You need to be careful to keep those top performers extremely motivated to do more. And if you do things like have a 90% tax rate on the uppermost bracket like some places have, well, don't be surprised when you wind up killing off that kind of thing.