This argument is commonly made in talk of pay caps: "What about a sportsman/artist/musician who does something brilliant once..." Well, what about them? What on earth makes a single year where you do something really great worth a lifetime of pay? Why does a self-employed musician *deserve* to be paid for a lifetime for a year of work? It seems utterly bizarre to me as an argument.
Why is the self-employed sportsman/artists/musician any more entitled than a scientist/banker/grocer to be paid for an entire lifetime for only a short period of effort?
I appreciate your point about "good years"/"bad years" but frankly all jobs have that. It's a bad year to be a public sector worker right now. You'd think I was a loony if I claimed "I've done such good research this year I should be paid for 40 years in case I don't do anything worthwhile again."
When musicians are being interviewed about how they're not making money for something they did 30 years ago... well, let's just say I'm not overwhelmed with sympathy.
One might argue that a research scientist working in house had exchanged the risks and rewards of patenting their once in a life time invention for the risks and rewards of being a salaried employee.
The good year for musicians or writers can often be the result of years of underpaid work - their rewards and the efforts they make don't neatly fall into years.
Patents sort of do not address my issue on scientists. Patents sort of half way address my issue on engineers maybe if they want to give up actual engineering and try to invent something. Richard Feynman was undoubtedly an excellent physicist, likely one of the world's best. I think he owned one patent that was a joke and was notionally valued at one dollar (it was for the nuclear submarine IIRC).
One might argue that a research scientist working in house had exchanged the risks and rewards of patenting their once in a life time invention for the risks and rewards of being a salaried employee.
One might but what are those rewards given that "in house" means public sector with incredibly low job security.
The good year for musicians or writers can often be the result of years of underpaid work - their rewards and the efforts they make don't neatly fall into years.
Look at it this way -- if an MP said "It took me years of effort to get to be an MP. It's an extremely risky job. I can do my job to the best of my ability for years and then be voted out and never work as an MP again." he or she would be right. If he said "I therefore deserve to be paid for the rest of my life and never have to get another job again." he or she would be lynched.
Seriously, why can artists, musicians and writers get away with making the argument "what if I never do anything useful with my life ever again? How will I get paid?" and not have people laugh in their face? I actually find it hard to cope with the mindset of people who seem to genuinely believe that they should be absolutely fine being completely unproductive for many years if they did something great one year. Maybe, just maybe, it would be time to come down to earth and say gently to them: "if you've not done anything worthwhile as a musician in ten years, perhaps you should actually get a job?"
I really don't get why we accord this special status.
So yes, if someone does some amazing bit of artistic work I'm fine and happy that this can keep them in bread for five years, ten years, whatever... but the belief that somehow that should be it for their entire lives... well, I find it a bit boggling. But there you go. We live in a strange world where someone kicking a football about for a year or two could, quite happily should they choose, scratch their arse for the rest of their life and live off the interest.
Maybe creative stuff is special because it lives on. People keep reading the books, watching the film, playing the music. Whilst the operation they had only saved their life once, and the bus driver's journey was only convenient when they happened to be going across town.
Besides, those successes earn themselves, don't they? You and I don't get paid per idea, we get a regular wage/salary. The creative work becomes a product and people pay for a bit of it that they get to keep or rework - you haven't paid a million for a single that hit number one for two months, lots of people paid towards that final sum that lands in the artist's lap. And it's a gamble - the arty types know perfectly well that the chances of failure and scraping by on the breadline are far higher than hitting the big time - if they're prepared to take the risk then good luck to them, and if they happen to produce something that is the right level of quality at the right time then why shouldn't they reap the rewards of their creation?
I do find it harder to justify footballer money, though - that doesn't live on as such.
Maybe creative stuff is special because it lives on.
I'm not convinced by this argument. Creative stuff does not live on any more than, say, science, engineering, political or military things. I can name a few greek playwrights, more greek philosophers, mathematiciancs and scientists... But the method of remuneration is surely historical accident rather than because "creative stuff lives on". After all, at other periods in history the artist or creator would be a wage slave too. Most of the great musicians of the 18th and 19th C would be paid a wage by a sponsor.
the chances of failure and scraping by on the breadline are far higher than hitting the big time
That is true for many many people and ideas. People running start up companies, trying to get a start in politics... (funnily enough, I saw a play the other week about the trial of Dan White who shot Harvey Milk... part of the evidence given in his trial was the stress induced by his struggles to get by on the low wage he could get while trying to be elected as a San Francisco supervisor, a post he previously held).
I do find it harder to justify footballer money, though - that doesn't live on as such.
Well, I think that's it encapsulated. It's about historical accident and who we sympathise with. You happen to sympathise with "creatives", I imagine because you rather like their work. I can imagine others taking the opposite view that a footballer deserves to be rewarded well for the entertainment he brings to millions whereas who cares about somebody churning out obscure books or poems that not so many people read.
I just have no time whatsoever for people who somehow think that a "creative type" is uniquely different. They're in a business like anyone else.
I still think it's a bit different. Philosophers and scientists contribute to something that goes on and develops. Musicians and writers have products which sit on shelves (or hard drives) and get reused over and over.
There's no model for paying 79p towards a scientist's efforts and getting to use his work over and over again, but that's exactly what you get from a musician.
That's a historical accident of the times we live in. It used to be there was no way of paying a musician for a "product" as the musician would write a composition and after transcription it was "out there". I very much doubt J. S. Bach or Mozart could make the money to survive by being paid "per performance". In another universe, where near zero cost digital reproduction happened earlier, we'd probably think it a bit weird to pay a musician a fee to "own a copy" of their work in the same way we would think it weird to pay Gustav Eiffel a percentage for a plastic model or to look at a photo of his tower.
I don't think we should be guided in our opinion of what "should be" by the accident of where we happen to be now.
Time was there was no such model for a musician -- maybe in further time we will forget there ever was such a model. There still is really no such model for a painter (well, you can buy a print I guess) or a sculptor (they can sell a piece once but not usually repeated copies -- with the possible exception of Warhol's soup cans). As someone else has pointed out, there's a partial model for some such scientists (who can get a patent). When you think about it, some musicians are "waged" -- if they play in certain types of orchestra they are paid per performance regardless of the crowd. Does that make them less "creative"? Writers again fall into both camps. Some writers don't get paid per "sale" (for example journalists) but are simply waged and some have a mix taking both types of job.
I don't think the existence or otherwise of such a model tells us anything about how such a person *should* be paid though. In the end I don't feel too strongly about whether someone is paid a fixed amount or by selling individual copies of their work. I do feel pretty strongly about people making cases that their particular type of work is special and deserves exemption when we consider what is right or fair for people to expect.
I see where you're going with the scientists & engineers point but not all scientists work in the public sector some work for private sector organisations. Some output from scientific research has direct commercial applicability over the life of a patent.
One of my dad's patents was probably worth over its lifetime a couple of dozen million dollars. Dad's salary paid his mortgage for a year and he bought a car.
People are free (ish) to pick the mix of risks and rewards they want.
I think any system that involves a personal pay cap leaves cash on the table to be appropriated by others. Football fans seem very keen to watch some people play football. I think if you capped footballers salaries at a per capita level you either give footballs fans something for cheaper than they are prepared to pay for it or more likely gives more money to Sky.
I think it's a general objection to the idea of "special pleading" that "my profession/job/career is extra important". Lots of very wealthy rock stars or sportsmen wail about high taxes because they say that they only earn for a very short portion of their lives. It never seems to occur to them that, perhaps, the solution to earning only for a short proportion of their lives might be to do something else to earn. They seem quite happy with the proposition that they should only work for a small proportion of their lives. Nice for them I suppose.
Your average novelist, working in the UK, earns -- according to a Society of Authors survey a couple of years ago -- just £4,500 a year. 80% of them earn less than £18,500 a year. Some lucky few earn more (in a handful of cases much, much more) than that per year -- virtually nobody earns as much as the average CEO of an FT100 company, however. (Well, for "virtually" read "you can count them on the fingers of one hand".)
Now. Those low earnings are not the result of being unproductive -- they're often the result of (a) having to hold down a part time job to allow them to eat while pursuing their vocation, or (b) working their way up the learning curve.
I spent well over a decade on the low side of that £4.5K/year income average. I'm now on the high side of the £18.5K/year bracket. But I wouldn't be earning that well if I hadn't spent a lot of time sweating in return for virtually no remuneration. In fact, I reckon I was writing for around 25 years before I hit the (not very) big time.
The point is: the bits of art you recognize and appreciate are not sudden bursts of genius, they're the outcome of the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice, carried out with virtually no remuneration and very little encouragement along the way.
I don't think the existence of poorly paid musicians or artists tells us anything about whether well paid ones should get special treatment. I've got lots of friends who write or are in bands in their spare time who would love to make more money at it -- and good luck to them as a lot of them do work very hard at it while holding down a job.
But this really isn't the point -- and I certainly did not intend this to be about you personally or your personal finances (of which I have no idea other than what you told me above). I'm simply reacting to the idea that you put forward that the self-employed (and particularly musicians) should not have a salary cap in case they had a "once-in-a-lifetime hit". Why on earth do you operate under the belief that someone naturally deserves to be paid for their entire life for a once-in-a-lifetime hit? I can see that if you didn't consider it hard "oh, he wrote that song, you know, it's dead dead catchy and sold ten million and now he hasn't much money" might seem harsh. But really do you believe that one act, however, extraordianary in a short space of time somehow naturally gives someone a right to a life of idle luxury?
As for the argument that there are plenty of low paid musicians and writers. You are correct. They certainly would not be affected by a salary cap. However, the existence of low paid musicians and artists doesn't tell us anything about how we should treat or tax the high paid ones. If a banker argued that we shouldn't cap his pay because there are a lot of low paid bank workers we'd think he was a lunatic. Why can a musician or a writer get away with the same argument?
I have no idea what you earn and the argument certainly is not about you but about those high enough to (potentially) have their salaries capped which was where the discussion was.
Then there's the "struggled in poverty for years" argument which you made. If a super wealthy CEO of a company said that he struggled in poverty for some time (I think Alan Sugar could reasonably make this case at least to some degree) I don't expect you would have too much sympathy for the argument that we should treat him favourably on tax grounds for that argument.
So sure, I appreciate that being an author or a musician is usually incredibly poorly paid. I sympathise with the uncertainty of the job and the uncertainty of its rewards. However, I still have no truck with the idea that those who have "made it" to the top get special pleading on any tax situation we might consider because they once had hard times, because others in their profession currently have hard times or because there's a high chance they will again have hard times.
So let's take this aside the natural tendancy for people to feel favourable to those who make books we like and music we like.... if tomorrow, some higher tax band or salary cap came in and Alan Sugar said it should not apply to him as he is self-employed (not sure he actually is but let's for the sake of argument say he is) and struggled in poverty for years, would you honestly feel much sympathy for that argument?
I'm simply reacting to the idea that you put forward that the self-employed (and particularly musicians) should not have a salary cap in case they had a "once-in-a-lifetime hit". Why on earth do you operate under the belief that someone naturally deserves to be paid for their entire life for a once-in-a-lifetime hit?
Let's say they have a working life of 40 years. First decade, they earn 10K a year. Then they have a hit that makes £1M in a year. Then they have 29 more years averaging 20K a year. Total: £1680K.
Suppose we institute an earning cap at 200K. We just halved their lifetime earnings.
Compare with a job-for-life steady earner whose income grows from 10K a year to 40K a year over the same 40 year period; they earn £1M, and never get within spitting distance of the cap.
Progressive income tax doesn't really have this problem because it's progressive. A hard income cap, on the other hand, is regressive.
They also provide an incentive for tax avoidance. I am a writer; the job isn't scalable, I can't hire people to work for me at what I do. Imposing a cap on income would, however, give me an incentive to form a limited company and hire minimum-wage workers to sit around doing nothing, while using some elaborate shareholding scheme to avoid tax by shovelling the company profits offshore or something. Or by arranging my publishing contracts so that the publisher's payments to me are timed to stagger across tax years. It's nonsense on stilts.
A salary cap ... is a bit different. (Implication: you can hit the cap on what an employer pays you, but if they're okay with you moonlighting for someone else you can work more.) It's still a crude control, though -- I'd much rather see an hourly wage ratio cap, whereby the highest-paid employee in an organization can earn no more than a fixed multiple of the lowest paid employee's wages. (CEO wants a rise? Janitor has to get one first ...)
And I have no problem whatsoever with progressive income tax all the way up to 99% in the highest bracket.
Now actually, I think an income cap is too crude a measure myself so I guess for most of this we're actually not in disagreement. Progressive taxations system (rather than the one we have now which is when all is taken into account regressive), linking lowest paid with highest paid, all great ideas.
My comments were not really to be super supportive of high level cap on income but to be in opposition to the idea of making exceptions in a taxation system for those who are self-employed or who have uncertain or uneven incomes.
A hard income cap, on the other hand, is regressive.
Technically it's not. A taxation system is regressive if the proportion of tax paid on income goes down (or stays the same -- in mathematical terms monotonically non-decreasing) as income goes up but this is only considered within a single income year. The hard income cap is a progressive tax system in the technical sense. I don't think it would be possible to have a tax system which charged tax yearly but was progressive over a lifetime (apart from systems which simply refunded you lots). Anyway, that's a technical quibble which I'm afraid is the sort of thing I'm unable to resist.
We just halved their lifetime earnings.
Which seems harsh but if we took someone who left school and immediately went into a well paying job which was taxed in the 40-50% band for most of their income -- we just almost halved their lifetime earnings too.
But look, actually, I wouldn't argue an income cap was the best way of dealing with these things myself. A progressive income tax rising as you suggested would be much more what I would consider reasonable. But surely that has the same issues that you considered. If top incomes are charged 99% then someone with a very good year for earnings and lots of poor years for earnings suffers more than someone who constantly earns well.
Imposing a cap on income would, however, give me an incentive to form a limited company ... Or by arranging my publishing contracts so that the publisher's payments to me are timed to stagger across tax years. It's nonsense on stilts.
Well, this is pretty much where we came in as far as this argument goes. When they were paying 95% income in the 60s the Beatles wrote the song Taxman (one for you nineteen for me) about how unjust they thought it was, partly on the assumption that they might have only a short career of earning that level of money.
Any system which taxes the super-wealthy (until their pips squeak -- lovely phrase) has the risk of them going elsewhere with a more favourable tax system (hence Monaco). And you're right, it is "nonsense on stilts". A kind of ghastly "prisoner's dilemma" where a country which wants to impose a high taxation on the wealthy is vulnerable to another country saying "oh, come and live here, we charge you nothing and we're stacked full of yachts and casinos".
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andrewducker) wrote2012-02-09 01:22 pm
no subject
Why is the self-employed sportsman/artists/musician any more entitled than a scientist/banker/grocer to be paid for an entire lifetime for only a short period of effort?
I appreciate your point about "good years"/"bad years" but frankly all jobs have that. It's a bad year to be a public sector worker right now. You'd think I was a loony if I claimed "I've done such good research this year I should be paid for 40 years in case I don't do anything worthwhile again."
When musicians are being interviewed about how they're not making money for something they did 30 years ago... well, let's just say I'm not overwhelmed with sympathy.
no subject
One might argue that a research scientist working in house had exchanged the risks and rewards of patenting their once in a life time invention for the risks and rewards of being a salaried employee.
The good year for musicians or writers can often be the result of years of underpaid work - their rewards and the efforts they make don't neatly fall into years.
no subject
One might argue that a research scientist working in house had exchanged the risks and rewards of patenting their once in a life time invention for the risks and rewards of being a salaried employee.
One might but what are those rewards given that "in house" means public sector with incredibly low job security.
The good year for musicians or writers can often be the result of years of underpaid work - their rewards and the efforts they make don't neatly fall into years.
Look at it this way -- if an MP said "It took me years of effort to get to be an MP. It's an extremely risky job. I can do my job to the best of my ability for years and then be voted out and never work as an MP again." he or she would be right. If he said "I therefore deserve to be paid for the rest of my life and never have to get another job again." he or she would be lynched.
Seriously, why can artists, musicians and writers get away with making the argument "what if I never do anything useful with my life ever again? How will I get paid?" and not have people laugh in their face? I actually find it hard to cope with the mindset of people who seem to genuinely believe that they should be absolutely fine being completely unproductive for many years if they did something great one year. Maybe, just maybe, it would be time to come down to earth and say gently to them: "if you've not done anything worthwhile as a musician in ten years, perhaps you should actually get a job?"
I really don't get why we accord this special status.
So yes, if someone does some amazing bit of artistic work I'm fine and happy that this can keep them in bread for five years, ten years, whatever... but the belief that somehow that should be it for their entire lives... well, I find it a bit boggling. But there you go. We live in a strange world where someone kicking a football about for a year or two could, quite happily should they choose, scratch their arse for the rest of their life and live off the interest.
no subject
Besides, those successes earn themselves, don't they? You and I don't get paid per idea, we get a regular wage/salary. The creative work becomes a product and people pay for a bit of it that they get to keep or rework - you haven't paid a million for a single that hit number one for two months, lots of people paid towards that final sum that lands in the artist's lap. And it's a gamble - the arty types know perfectly well that the chances of failure and scraping by on the breadline are far higher than hitting the big time - if they're prepared to take the risk then good luck to them, and if they happen to produce something that is the right level of quality at the right time then why shouldn't they reap the rewards of their creation?
I do find it harder to justify footballer money, though - that doesn't live on as such.
no subject
I'm not convinced by this argument. Creative stuff does not live on any more than, say, science, engineering, political or military things. I can name a few greek playwrights, more greek philosophers, mathematiciancs and scientists... But the method of remuneration is surely historical accident rather than because "creative stuff lives on". After all, at other periods in history the artist or creator would be a wage slave too. Most of the great musicians of the 18th and 19th C would be paid a wage by a sponsor.
the chances of failure and scraping by on the breadline are far higher than hitting the big time
That is true for many many people and ideas. People running start up companies, trying to get a start in politics... (funnily enough, I saw a play the other week about the trial of Dan White who shot Harvey Milk... part of the evidence given in his trial was the stress induced by his struggles to get by on the low wage he could get while trying to be elected as a San Francisco supervisor, a post he previously held).
I do find it harder to justify footballer money, though - that doesn't live on as such.
Well, I think that's it encapsulated. It's about historical accident and who we sympathise with. You happen to sympathise with "creatives", I imagine because you rather like their work. I can imagine others taking the opposite view that a footballer deserves to be rewarded well for the entertainment he brings to millions whereas who cares about somebody churning out obscure books or poems that not so many people read.
I just have no time whatsoever for people who somehow think that a "creative type" is uniquely different. They're in a business like anyone else.
no subject
There's no model for paying 79p towards a scientist's efforts and getting to use his work over and over again, but that's exactly what you get from a musician.
no subject
I don't think we should be guided in our opinion of what "should be" by the accident of where we happen to be now.
no subject
I don't think the existence or otherwise of such a model tells us anything about how such a person *should* be paid though. In the end I don't feel too strongly about whether someone is paid a fixed amount or by selling individual copies of their work. I do feel pretty strongly about people making cases that their particular type of work is special and deserves exemption when we consider what is right or fair for people to expect.
no subject
One of my dad's patents was probably worth over its lifetime a couple of dozen million dollars. Dad's salary paid his mortgage for a year and he bought a car.
People are free (ish) to pick the mix of risks and rewards they want.
I think any system that involves a personal pay cap leaves cash on the table to be appropriated by others. Football fans seem very keen to watch some people play football. I think if you capped footballers salaries at a per capita level you either give footballs fans something for cheaper than they are prepared to pay for it or more likely gives more money to Sky.
Is this an IP issue for you more generally?
no subject
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Fwages.htm
Is this an IP issue for you more generally?
I think it's a general objection to the idea of "special pleading" that "my profession/job/career is extra important". Lots of very wealthy rock stars or sportsmen wail about high taxes because they say that they only earn for a very short portion of their lives. It never seems to occur to them that, perhaps, the solution to earning only for a short proportion of their lives might be to do something else to earn. They seem quite happy with the proposition that they should only work for a small proportion of their lives. Nice for them I suppose.
no subject
Now. Those low earnings are not the result of being unproductive -- they're often the result of (a) having to hold down a part time job to allow them to eat while pursuing their vocation, or (b) working their way up the learning curve.
I spent well over a decade on the low side of that £4.5K/year income average. I'm now on the high side of the £18.5K/year bracket. But I wouldn't be earning that well if I hadn't spent a lot of time sweating in return for virtually no remuneration. In fact, I reckon I was writing for around 25 years before I hit the (not very) big time.
The point is: the bits of art you recognize and appreciate are not sudden bursts of genius, they're the outcome of the proverbial 10,000 hours of practice, carried out with virtually no remuneration and very little encouragement along the way.
no subject
But this really isn't the point -- and I certainly did not intend this to be about you personally or your personal finances (of which I have no idea other than what you told me above). I'm simply reacting to the idea that you put forward that the self-employed (and particularly musicians) should not have a salary cap in case they had a "once-in-a-lifetime hit". Why on earth do you operate under the belief that someone naturally deserves to be paid for their entire life for a once-in-a-lifetime hit? I can see that if you didn't consider it hard "oh, he wrote that song, you know, it's dead dead catchy and sold ten million and now he hasn't much money" might seem harsh. But really do you believe that one act, however, extraordianary in a short space of time somehow naturally gives someone a right to a life of idle luxury?
As for the argument that there are plenty of low paid musicians and writers. You are correct. They certainly would not be affected by a salary cap. However, the existence of low paid musicians and artists doesn't tell us anything about how we should treat or tax the high paid ones. If a banker argued that we shouldn't cap his pay because there are a lot of low paid bank workers we'd think he was a lunatic. Why can a musician or a writer get away with the same argument?
I have no idea what you earn and the argument certainly is not about you but about those high enough to (potentially) have their salaries capped which was where the discussion was.
Then there's the "struggled in poverty for years" argument which you made. If a super wealthy CEO of a company said that he struggled in poverty for some time (I think Alan Sugar could reasonably make this case at least to some degree) I don't expect you would have too much sympathy for the argument that we should treat him favourably on tax grounds for that argument.
So sure, I appreciate that being an author or a musician is usually incredibly poorly paid. I sympathise with the uncertainty of the job and the uncertainty of its rewards. However, I still have no truck with the idea that those who have "made it" to the top get special pleading on any tax situation we might consider because they once had hard times, because others in their profession currently have hard times or because there's a high chance they will again have hard times.
So let's take this aside the natural tendancy for people to feel favourable to those who make books we like and music we like.... if tomorrow, some higher tax band or salary cap came in and Alan Sugar said it should not apply to him as he is self-employed (not sure he actually is but let's for the sake of argument say he is) and struggled in poverty for years, would you honestly feel much sympathy for that argument?
no subject
Let's say they have a working life of 40 years. First decade, they earn 10K a year. Then they have a hit that makes £1M in a year. Then they have 29 more years averaging 20K a year. Total: £1680K.
Suppose we institute an earning cap at 200K. We just halved their lifetime earnings.
Compare with a job-for-life steady earner whose income grows from 10K a year to 40K a year over the same 40 year period; they earn £1M, and never get within spitting distance of the cap.
Progressive income tax doesn't really have this problem because it's progressive. A hard income cap, on the other hand, is regressive.
They also provide an incentive for tax avoidance. I am a writer; the job isn't scalable, I can't hire people to work for me at what I do. Imposing a cap on income would, however, give me an incentive to form a limited company and hire minimum-wage workers to sit around doing nothing, while using some elaborate shareholding scheme to avoid tax by shovelling the company profits offshore or something. Or by arranging my publishing contracts so that the publisher's payments to me are timed to stagger across tax years. It's nonsense on stilts.
A salary cap ... is a bit different. (Implication: you can hit the cap on what an employer pays you, but if they're okay with you moonlighting for someone else you can work more.) It's still a crude control, though -- I'd much rather see an hourly wage ratio cap, whereby the highest-paid employee in an organization can earn no more than a fixed multiple of the lowest paid employee's wages. (CEO wants a rise? Janitor has to get one first ...)
And I have no problem whatsoever with progressive income tax all the way up to 99% in the highest bracket.
no subject
My comments were not really to be super supportive of high level cap on income but to be in opposition to the idea of making exceptions in a taxation system for those who are self-employed or who have uncertain or uneven incomes.
A hard income cap, on the other hand, is regressive.
Technically it's not. A taxation system is regressive if the proportion of tax paid on income goes down (or stays the same -- in mathematical terms monotonically non-decreasing) as income goes up but this is only considered within a single income year. The hard income cap is a progressive tax system in the technical sense. I don't think it would be possible to have a tax system which charged tax yearly but was progressive over a lifetime (apart from systems which simply refunded you lots). Anyway, that's a technical quibble which I'm afraid is the sort of thing I'm unable to resist.
We just halved their lifetime earnings.
Which seems harsh but if we took someone who left school and immediately went into a well paying job which was taxed in the 40-50% band for most of their income -- we just almost halved their lifetime earnings too.
But look, actually, I wouldn't argue an income cap was the best way of dealing with these things myself. A progressive income tax rising as you suggested would be much more what I would consider reasonable. But surely that has the same issues that you considered. If top incomes are charged 99% then someone with a very good year for earnings and lots of poor years for earnings suffers more than someone who constantly earns well.
Imposing a cap on income would, however, give me an incentive to form a limited company ... Or by arranging my publishing contracts so that the publisher's payments to me are timed to stagger across tax years. It's nonsense on stilts.
Well, this is pretty much where we came in as far as this argument goes. When they were paying 95% income in the 60s the Beatles wrote the song Taxman (one for you nineteen for me) about how unjust they thought it was, partly on the assumption that they might have only a short career of earning that level of money.
Any system which taxes the super-wealthy (until their pips squeak -- lovely phrase) has the risk of them going elsewhere with a more favourable tax system (hence Monaco). And you're right, it is "nonsense on stilts". A kind of ghastly "prisoner's dilemma" where a country which wants to impose a high taxation on the wealthy is vulnerable to another country saying "oh, come and live here, we charge you nothing and we're stacked full of yachts and casinos".