What the tax system doesn't respect is that my life might be better and more productive if I spent a year earning 200,000 and then took a year off, then if I worked a 100,000/year job the entire time.
But you lose out if you instead want to do 2 years on 2 years off, or if your one-year employer doesn't want you to work July to June, or if your year-off plans don't work July to June, or any number of more complicated scenarios. My point stands that the system isn't designed to support this kind of irregular high-income work.