I guess as always the difficult thing to define is what is very wealthy. Someone who is 30 with 2m in the bank and has another 30 years plus to grow it, is very different to someone who is 67 with 2m in a pension.
I dont disagree that excessive wealth should be taxed but also you need to have an incentive to do as best as you can in life. Everyone needs to pay more and those who are at the bottom end of the income spectrum need lifting out of tax completely and if you were brave enough and radical enough, it could be done, but it would mean putting around 5% on income tax at every level. The problem is politics gets in the way of doing what is necessary.
As regards luck, well luck is if you win the lottery or if you are born to wealthy parents. But purely by virtue of being born in the western world you have won relative to virtually everyone born in the developing world, yet most wouldn't say they are lucky.
Personally I could have left school and gone to work on a building site like most of my mates, probably earned a decent wage, but instead I went through A levels, Degree and then whilst working a Masters and a PhD (both of which I funded). By doing so that has afforded me a good job with a very good salary. I wasn't born into a family that were interested in accademia or had any money, my dad worked a manual job and my mam, when she could, worked part time in a sewing factory. Yes I had a stable home life and I have no serious ailments, so I suppose you could count that as luck, but thats about it. So in reality I'm probably as lucky as about 50% of the population. But if you view someone in isolation without any concept of how they got to where they are, then everything appears to be purely good fortune.
Well you have just hit the nail on the head
Born in the UK luck
Stable family luck
Where did you get your motivation from? Parents ? Luck? Maybe its just the way you are? Luck
Does Phil Foden get to earn 300k a week because he somehow deserves the sheer fortune of being born with a talent which is luck, his talent is in football rather than ping pong, that is luck.
The general point is life offers opportunities but also blocks them and those opportunities are down to luck. Life is inherently unfair and people should recognise that. It doesnt mean I think we should take excess money off all wealthy people but im not having wealthy people pulling the not fair card.
There is no reason beyond selfishness and greed why some are unwilling to spread a bit more of their luck onto others.
Inequality causes so many societal problems that it actually makes sense. Because when the shit hits the fan like covid, crime, illness, public services and general civil unrest it wont be Lord twatty bollocks or the hedge fund manager that comes to the rescue.
It will be a supermarket worker, nurse, care worker, copper or social worker.
Let me ask you this if everyone got the same amount of luck, born in the right country, good parents, born with motivation but more importantly were lucky enough to have a certain level of intellect then that's a lot of competition. The good job and the good salary suddenly isn't there someone else got it. Loads of clever motivated people are now forced to do lower paid jobs.
I guess one could call that their bad luck.
And someone who still got the big job probably through connections as everyone was after it could wrap his arms around his dosh and say.
"Get the fuck off my money I worked hard and deserved this"
We are actually not that far apart in our thinking tbh but some people with dosh really are spoilt wankers.
As I'm neither poor nor wealthy none of this effects me much outside of paying some more tax which im happy with. I could have gone down your route as an example but I chose not to.
I suppose the question is do you have a choice in who you are for certain things.
