I think that as you said, she's the exception. Why are people using superstars as the rule, instead of the exception? Authorship covers everything, from software to how-to books. Comic book authors. It covers authors which are barely successful. Most authors struggle to write all sorts of little pieces which used to end up in magazines, thousands, just struggling to get by.
While the current copyright length indeed seems excessive, looking at the most successful and determining fairness seems very untoward. As it stands now, an author could build up a library of their writings, and perhaps even sell it for their retirement, as it has value.
Is that what is happening often for indie novelists? I don't know, but to others in this thread know?
I know you were just musing, but I really dislike this "let's create a hyper-invasive tax framework, so that anyone who etches out a little wealth has it capped" concept. There's no wealth to redistribute, not in the way people think. Money isn't real. It's just an indicator of things. In some cases, it's an indicator that someone owns a lot of stock in a company that could be worth 1/20th of its value tomorrow, after a crash, and further is valued at hundreds or thousands of times the actual value of the company today.
In such cases, it's often an indicator of capacity to steer the economy, not of any tangible wealth.
But people need something to strive for. Wealth is one of those things. In a free market economy, wealth is the reward for job well done. It does make people hustle. It's not perfect, but we've seen how poorly and incapable any centrally planned economy seems to be.
As a Canadian, I do believe the government should be involved in certain things. I have a post office, schools, police stations, fire department, food inspections, and so no on that the government is involved in, so I think health care makes sense too. Yet I absolutely do not believe the government should be planning most sectors of the economy, nor should it be meddling too deeply in the wealth ratios of its citizens.
To put this in that context, would you want to have the current US administration determine how every sector of the economy works, and how people are paid, etc, etc, eg central planning? Can you imagine?
Of course there is nuance. Of course there are exceptions. But overall management of individual wealth seems very invasive to me.