The most important part of any system is how people feel about it.
If people feel it's just and good, and that good for others begets good for them, then they are more likely to be and do good.
No law, no tax, no specific policy, will ever have as much power over how well things are going for everyone as the zeitgeist itself does.
It's better for all of us if we believe people get rich because they deserve it, and if we don't believe it, we need to do what we need to do to get us back to feeling that way.
Suppose some rich people actually got rich by dishonesty, exploitation and selfishness. Believing that rich people get rich because they deserve it will then mean either (1) believing that dishonesty, exploitation and selfishness are good or (2) believing a bunch of falsehoods about how those rich people got rich.
#1 is clearly harmful, to the individuals involved and to society as a whole. #2 is probably also harmful, not so much because it matters what everyone thinks about how particular rich people got that way as because believing those falsehoods probably means believing a bunch of other falsehoods about, e.g., how business and society actually work, and it's probably bad if everyone believes a lot of false things about that.
Suppose some rich people actually got rich mostly by good luck. Believing that rich people get rich because they deserve it will then mean overlooking the importance of luck, and believing that people who don't get rich deserve not to be, and probably to believing that people who are poor deserve to be poor.
That's harmful because it begets a lack of sympathy towards others in need.
There are no doubt positive effects too; e.g., if you think that hard work reliably makes people rich then you may be more likely to work hard, and maybe it's good for society if everyone is willing to work hard. (Though I have my doubts about how well that sort of self-deception can actually be expected to work.) But it's not at all obvious, at least to me, that the overall effects are good, because of harms like the ones I described above.
(... Maybe you were being sarcastic, in which case I apologize for missing your point. But it looks to me as if you meant what you wrote.)
> It's better for all of us if we believe people get rich because they deserve it, and if we don't believe it, we need to do what we need to do to get us back to feeling that way.
If you mean that in a sense where we should be doing all in our power to make sure that only those deserving enough get rich (comabtting corruption, stripping people of ill-gotten fortunes, preventing trust building and unfair competition, removing money from politics, stopping government welfare for the rich, etc) so that the ideal is closer to reality, than I agree.
However, most people supporting this world view want to do just the opposite: take it as a given that rich people are deserving of their wealth, and so using all of societies resources to help the rich to get richer, since by definition they are most worthy. This is a deeply dangerous and disgusting tactic that has been causing significant harm to societies all over the world.
> If you mean that in a sense where we should be doing all in our power to make sure that only those deserving enough get rich (comabtting corruption, stripping people of ill-gotten fortunes, preventing trust building and unfair competition, removing money from politics, stopping government welfare for the rich, etc) so that the ideal is closer to reality, than I agree.
If people feel it's just and good, and that good for others begets good for them, then they are more likely to be and do good.
No law, no tax, no specific policy, will ever have as much power over how well things are going for everyone as the zeitgeist itself does.
It's better for all of us if we believe people get rich because they deserve it, and if we don't believe it, we need to do what we need to do to get us back to feeling that way.