>You want to reward smart, clever, inventive individuals. But you do also want to make sure they don't automatically get privileged legal or ethical treatment which encourages destructive narcissistic and authoritarian behaviours in the culture as a whole.
How would you address this? It seems that you're making a point that if a person became rich AND they didn't have a safety net — they are most probably toxic individuals. If I understood you correctly, it feels that such rhetoric penalizes the "smart, clever, inventive individuals" that come from poor background. As someone coming from poverty I find these statements unfair and paternalistic.
https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-t...
It's vastly easier to become rich if you don't care about employees, customers, tenants, and co-workers, or if you can persuade yourself that people who don't take risks and succeed are somehow inherently morally inferior and deficient.
In fact a good safety net is likely to increase entrepreneurial activity, because it makes it possible to fail into a safety net instead of failing into homelessness and catastrophe.
Tax increases are a separate issue. But generally wealth inequality is politically as well as financially toxic.
You want to reward smart, clever, inventive individuals. But you do also want to make sure they don't automatically get privileged legal or ethical treatment which encourages destructive narcissistic and authoritarian behaviours in the culture as a whole.