This makes me wonder, was pay competitive for rocket scientists during the space race, or was the mission so compelling that nobody cared if they were making less than they might have at a defense contractor?

A friend of mine is an electrician, an in-demand skilled job. He can make +/- 10% working for the government directly, at Lawrence Livermore, or in the private sector. Each has tradeoffs like how interesting the work is or the hours, but in the end the government isn't really less competitive.

Now imagine Facebook steps in and wants to hire all the electricians and is willing to pay $750k/yr. Obviously the entire system becomes fucked and the government (or even "normal" businesses) won't be able to find electricians.

Don't get me wrong... I like my tech salary. But inserting a player into any market or economy with effectively unlimited resources breaks it.

If Facebook could create a local monopoly or competitive advantage to pay electricians $1M/yr, they would to deny the skills to their competitors.

I found this trying to Google around for NASA scientists pay during the space race. Turns out maybe money wasn’t the biggest factor involved.

tldr; Korolev, the lead Soviet engineer during the space race died in the middle of it from colon cancer and they never recovered.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/07/11/this...

IRS agents are easy to calculate pay.

Base living wage ($70-$90k)

+ 1-5% of each amount recovered

Incentivize pursuing the biggest evaders, and the problem may solve itself.

As other commissioned jobs will show you, like in real estate, that’s only an incentive to close high volume easy deals, not move mountains to chase hard deals.

Your idea would likely just spur a movement to throw the book at normal working people to extract the most from easy targets, like self-employed misfiles.

Admitted, without much data to back myself up, I think I disagree. Real Estate has a tier of broker that handles the huge deals too.

Right now the IRS are spending too much time going after the low hanging fruit, which is hurting the little guys. The department has been gutted and understaffed, so they are trying to hit the easy less sophisticated targets.

A few $1 Million settlements could more than double their salary for the year. Even if the bonus was split between a team, a few whales would be a boon.

You could address that to have the benefit only usable once per year.