Doubling your income would mean you can take 50% of your time off with the same income.
Pretty sure that would change your life!
Pretty sure that would change your life!
Maybe you have kids and you want to be able to pay for their education, or buy them a place to live... Maybe you're helping your family.
Personally I could have "retired" a long while back if I wanted to have a lower standard of living and also take some risk. But I don't hate my work, I do things out of work as well, I prefer a nicer house and a nicer car, I'd probably be bored if I didn't work.
A more solid factor is that companies don't want to hire part-time developers, because coordination overhead means twice the number of developers each working half as many hours are far less effective.
The other way to work 50% is to take a few months or years break between jobs.
I've enjoyed doing that. It's certainly not for everyone.
> So 50% more salary might only end up being 20% more in your hand.
Poor people still, comparatively, spend more of their income to taxes. That's because poor people have to spend more of their income on direct consumption, i.e. not investment.
If I'm poor I'm easily spending 90% of all my money on stuff for me, right now. If I'm rich that drops to 10%, and the rest goes towards stuff that isn't taxed.
So, while income tax may favor the poor, sales tax very obviously favors the rich. The only reason a progressive tax exists is because rich people are so powerfully favored in modern tax systems, we need to try to bring them back in line to the burden poorer people face. Even still, poor people face more burden.
The economy and society isn't structured like this. I'd happily take half the pay I have now for half the time. But the only way to get that time is to make 10 dollars an hour flipping burgers.