What do you suggest?  Should we confiscate 99% of Messrs. Thomson and Weston's wealth and transfer it to Joe 6 Pack?  No doubt you'd find that less despicable.  And more importantly, how do you expect to pull that off, exactly?  M. Hollande's 75% rate didn't work out so well for him, did it?  Maybe we should drop all pretense and simply nationalize their wealth, a la Chavez and Mugabe, because that's been such a success for Venezuela and Zimbabwe.  Or we could imprison them, as Putin did to Khodorkovsky.