Large enough to stimulate people to learn, small enough that those working hard do not end up wearing out their bodies before their pension, end up on the streets or dead.
> If someone spent their youth doing drugs and having children out of wedlock do they really deserve to earn a salary within say 10% of someone that spent their youth working to gain the skills and experience necessary to be a doctor or lawyer?
Do you mean to imply that there are no doctors or lawyers with children out of wedlock or on drugs?
> Just because the outcomes need to be more equal?
I would avoid the word equal, I would use the word fair.
Not sure how you got that impression. If you thought that the 'large enough to stimulate people to learn' is a factor in that: I was thinking of kids looking around them seeing zero advantage of having an education might not be incentivized enough to acquire one.