It doesn't make sense at all to have a blanket income, well not unless you live in a world like Star Trek where money has no value. My sister thinks everyone should get the same income too, even surgeons and high caliber medical personnel. I asked her why someone would go the school for 10+ years and get half a million in debt just to make the same as a receptionist? She believes all doctors should get into the profession because they want to help people, it's not about money. 
That goes to show how deluded some people are. My sister is highly educated and her husband is an attorney; they make serious money, but she acts like she doesn't. Her job is a joke, but she makes bank because she's good with people. Lives a lavish lifestyle and tells people she's "blessed" all the time.
You can't just level the playing field like that, there is a reason people become doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc. It's true they like the field of study, but you don't go to college for 8-10 years to make 30k a year.
You're right, nobody would do the demanding jobs if they could cook hot dogs for the same money a drilling rig hand makes. I've seen guys who barely finished high school make 150-200k a year working a rig; it's not for everyone that's for sure.
I can't sign on with his idea either even though I believe the polarization of wealth is obscene. Capitalism is a good engine but (forgive the working class analogy here, all you managerial types) when you have a good engine you meter input to govern oitput. You don't just feed the thing more more more until it destroys itself.
I think you need a mix of socialism and capitalism, even though they're antithetical. Free market purists like Schiff make solid arguments in favor of the law of the economic jungle but every society is going to have to contend with its bottom 5 percent. Even if we execute them all and institute strict eugenics there's just a new bottom 5 percent. The upper classes are always going to get taxed to carry the less capable. Its unfair, and I'd keep it to a minimum but its the cost of keeping a society together.
Someone the other day was making fun of people who want to cap wealth. That's me and it's a half baked idea. I have no idea how you count someone's wealth, whether 100, 200, 500 million is good. I have no idea. But I do think the good engine of capitalism breaks down and no longer delivers the efficiency and innovation that competition creates when monopolies can kill competition and squash or swallow up newcomers. So I decry the 1% having 99%, less because it's unfair (hey, so is the jungle) but because it's poor engine management. You'd think a true free market supporter would admit the need for keeping the free market free and unencumbered by dictators, but guys like Schiff never seem to acknowledge that monopolies emerge from free market commerce.
Engine killing aside, I might be on board with something like capping personal income at 10,000 times the income of rhe poorest person in the country. So if welfare, for which you have to show up and sign in and do something for 40 hours a week, pays 20k a year then Bezos can personally take home 200 million a year. That's a lot of latitude for competition and innovation so it's not a communist notion but I'm sure a better informed economist than I (so anyone who took a 101 class) would punch any number of holes in it. But it would be an interesting world because the richest people would be funding the hell out of the country. National heroes. They'd get applause just walking down the street. Instead of like now, when they're obliged to hide behind walls and armed guards because everyone knows they have all the money and do everything they can to pay nothing back to the society in which they prospered.
Yeah, why 10,000 times? Why not 1,000 or 100 once the masses decide it's still too unfair? Idk. I said it's half baked. Maybe it's dumb, but so is mass poverty while bankers and traders run a shell game on us every ten years.
The Free Shit Army looking to evenly redistribute wealth can fuck off tho. In between the bookends of social safety nets and outrageous or monopolistic wealth, I reckon government intervention should be minimal. Let the market decide because fighting it is a fool's endeavor. Also the protesters are assholes. Their commercial for communism is terrible.
