d&o,
everyone thinks they are the middle. but in fact, your assumptions always appear to put you on the right. the idea that inequality of outcome is sacrosanct is one of these.
you cannot inoculate yourself from outcomes if you believe in any kind of funded government system. any kind of taxation is a form of redistribution.
if you design a system which, over time, increases the portion of income for the top tier and reduces the portion of the bottom tiers, you are having an impact on outcomes.
that is the system in the us. 30 years ago, folks in the top tiers took less of the pie. now they take more of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Share_top_1_percent.jpg
that is a choice. it is an unavoidable choice. it is one that electorates make.
it is perfectly legitimate for them to want a different distribution of the pie. back to, say, the arrangement in the reagan era. or something else.
this would require taxes to be raised, in particular on the top tiers. to create a slightly steeper progression in the slope than that which currently exists. there is no magic that says one progression is better than another. each slope is a choice made by a society and its representatives.
nothing wrong with it. indeed, both republicans and democrats share almost exactly the same idea of what proportion of the pie should end up in the bellies of each wealth quintile. everyone agrees on the ideal, pretty much. http://thebigpicturereport.com/2012/06/22/wealth-inequality-perception-vs-ideal-vs-reality/
the difference between republicans and democrats is that republicans seem not to realise how far reality skews from the ideal.
how about setting up a tax scheme that aims to enable what most people think of as ideal?
fact is, i believe an unequal society is also an unstable and inefficient one. so i ally my sense of what folks may want with a historical and economic sense of what works. gross inequality doesn't. you only have to look back at the upper chart to see that extreme inequality is exactly coincident with financial crises.
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