The money could be used for something else - but the point here, as you rightly say, is that it's not your money. If person A gives person B some goods in exchange for services then that strikes me as being the business of those two people (insofar as it's not for illegal purposes). I don't mind a level of tax being paid on it, to fund all sorts of public goods, but saying to person A that they cannot pay person B more than X for their services strikes me as horribly infringing on their freedoms.
I do agree that some bits of the job market are horribly dysfunctional. But I'm not convinced that it's the governments job to make it more functional. I'd rather they just taxed all of the wages at a level which doesn't cause too much of an outcry (say, 50%), and used that money to fund things. Raising it to 90% seems more likely to distort things horrible, and lead to people spending lots of effort to bypassing it instead, making things even more complex.
People are definitely unhappier if there is more inequality - but a lot of that seems to come from seeing opportunities that they cannot possibly have. I'd be much more for focussing on reducing the problems in areas of high poverty by improving education and help for those people so that they have hope. That seems more productive to me.
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Re: Leaving aside the question of equivalence...
I do agree that some bits of the job market are horribly dysfunctional. But I'm not convinced that it's the governments job to make it more functional. I'd rather they just taxed all of the wages at a level which doesn't cause too much of an outcry (say, 50%), and used that money to fund things. Raising it to 90% seems more likely to distort things horrible, and lead to people spending lots of effort to bypassing it instead, making things even more complex.
People are definitely unhappier if there is more inequality - but a lot of that seems to come from seeing opportunities that they cannot possibly have. I'd be much more for focussing on reducing the problems in areas of high poverty by improving education and help for those people so that they have hope. That seems more productive to me.