>>High earners, which this study measures, are not the same as high owners.

Fair enough, except that not every high earner gets all that $ because they provide useful service.

Many Wall Street so-called "Traders" earn a bomb by shaving a fraction of a cent from transactions in which they have no actual business interest except the opportunity to shave some $ off somebody else. It's an elite rort against the rest of society. Look at a place like New Zealand to confirm that daily currency trades exceed the nation's annual GDP. Most of those trades are shams to shave a fraction of a penny for Takers multiplied by huge unneeded volume bought and sold in seconds, with the $ in the end coming from the citizenry who establish currency so they can do real commerce, not so "traders" can effectively tax commerce in exchange for nothing of value. A tiny federal tax on such activity would end it overnight and return the markets to the purpose for which society intends them.

Tiger is different. If he really is delivering value for Nike, then go to it. But I'd say for every Tiger there are numerous Brads on Wall Street scooping a lot more than $20M.

>>Woody Johnson, whose IQ is not much higher than the number of games the Jets won last year while basking in his incompetent leadership, has done absolutely nothing to earn his $10billion + net worth.

So do you advocate inheritance taxes? Those are easy to characterize as envy taxes and almost wiped out aristocratic ownership of/ability to maintain stately homes in the UK at one point, fwiw. Might be better to lightly tax all transactions and deliberately inflate so that people who don't use their $ for meaningful commerce don't stay rich forever.