That was more or less the tightrope Franklin Roosevelt was walking in the 30s. He imposed steeply graduated taxation to undercut more radical share-the-wealth programs, including Communism.
As Roosevelt put it, he was fighting not only “Communism,” but “Huey Longism, Coughlinism, Townsendism…I want to save our system, the capitalistic system. …To combat…crackpot ideas, it may be necessary to throw to the wolves the 46 men who are reported to have incomes in excess of $1,000,000 a year. In other words, limit incomes through taxation to $1,000,000…Further, it may be necessary to see to it that vast estates bequeathed to one person are limited in size.”
In post #5 (I’m new at this) Chronos suggests a sort of “Atlas Shrugged” scenario… in that, when a person gets the maximum monetary gain they can for their ‘contribution to society’ they will become disinterested in offering anything further.
I disagree.
People who are empassioned by whatever “passion” is moving them will probably not be deterred by the lack of further compensation for their vision.
Thirty million (in the proposed example in our real economy) would not be enough? The idea that further input wouldn’t profer any financial gain, so they’d just go away and ‘forget the whole thing’ is probably not correct.
People, even very intelligent, creative, innovative people, don’t ‘share’ their gifts for purely financial gain after a certain time of the accumulation of personal wealth. (Bill Gates…Warren Buffet…)
Let’s not be fooled by the Ayn Rand believers … even very, VERY wealthy people who remain active, engaged and interested in innovation and creativity would retain those motivations.