It's not about whether they are rich but about whether they produce income that can be taxed to pay for the needs of the poor.
good luck with the taxes thing though.
Isn't that unfair?
I personally recommend that we start in small experimental grounds. The idea of starting in the Bay Area is good because engineers are pushing hard workers into poverty, but they they go around with masks hitting people on the head with sticks just because they speak their minds.
The unfair part is that the 250k income of the software engineer is increasing demand for housing until it's too expensive for the cleaner although the demand and therefore price are high enough to warrant more housing it's not getting build because of zoning laws.
You say that's fair, but someone else could say it is unfair. The supply/demand equation you describe suggests how the salaries get decided upon, but that's not the same thing as fair. That's the system we have, but that doesn't make it automatically fair.
I mean, why should someone jump into the 1% simply for being engineer #2? Those gains are unfair, and should be taxed 100% to pay for healthcare for all.
No, they aren't. The system is older than any person alive today. It's older than people. It's a natural law of the universe. It's game theory and natural selection, ultimately, that plays the fundamental role.
It isn't about rewards or even about what's fair. It's about the market. You pay an engineer a lot of money because you need an engineer to do the job and the supply of engineers is low. On the other hand, the supply of people who can clean bathrooms is effectively unlimited. There are far more people willing to do the job than there are jobs for them to do.
Because people are paid for the value of what they produce, not the effort they spend producing it.