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If you take the view that you want to maximise financial equality (which may be debatable, but certainly minimising inequality seems laudable), whilst varying taxation rates then you can begin to apply economic mathematic models to see what you come up with.
Surely the easiest way to do that is everyone has zero.
Seriously though, it's an interesting question. In particular would this starting position:
maximise financial equality
result in more wealth to the majority than
maximise wealth overall and where would you have to flex the left-behinds (1% of the population, 33% of the population, etc) for the majority to be better off.
aggi
This is an interesting question.
Ignoring politics, it becomes a mathematical question, of maximising some quantity, whilst varying another.
If you take the view that you want to maximise financial equality (which may be debatable, but certainly minimising inequality seems laudable), whilst varying taxation rates then you can begin to apply economic mathematic models to see what you come up with.
The London Mathematical Laboratory have done some really interesting work in this area. It is part of their wider thesis that a lot of economic mathematics is cast incorrectly, using errant probabilistic approaches. Their approach, using Ergodic averaging, seems to be giving some very accurate models of inequality growth inherent in current capitalist economic theory. Their research also proposes models for calculating optimal taxation rates to combat the growth of inequality.
(Disclaimer, I am friends with one of the directors of the institute.)