Truthteller writes:
I don’t think intelligent people from lower performing nations should have to share too much or be hindered by the less intelligent countrymen. They should be allowed to shine and prosper above the rest. If they are forced to share everything, they can’t shine and everything averages out to nothing. They have no means to prove themselves and no reward for generations of hard work and careful breeding.
Truthteller’s comment is called the Wealth Redistribution Strawman. We cannot take any money from the more rich and transfer to the less rich because to do so would mean that achievers would not want to achieve anything or make any money, businesses would not want to create jobs or invest in enterprises and people would not be rewarded for their achievements so no one would try. All of society would average down to some mediocre level.
This is pretty much a straw man because this never or seldom happens anywhere in the world, even though wealth redistribution happens around the globe. In other words, societies redistribute wealth just fine without any of these grave consequences that the Right insists will occur. None of these catastrophes ever show up. So they are saying if we do X, Y will occur and Y will be bad. But we already do X and Y generally does not occur, so the argument really is just a scary sounding lie.
We already force the more successful to share with the more successful as it is in much of the world, no? What do you think taxation is? Taxation is wealth redistribution, and in every society that has social programs, taxation necessitates wealth redistribution from the richer to the poorer. So I am not advocating anything new, just saying do more of it. Even with all of the wealth redistribution going on in the world, virtually none of this taxation seems to be preventing rich people from getting rich from their hard work (but the rich do not work harder than anyone else anyway). No one is being preventing from shining or succeeding. Everything is not averaging out to nothing.
As long as taxation is not too extreme, it doesn’t seem to prevent anyone from making money, investing or just succeeding in general.
Also: show me one society on Earth that does not engage in some form of wealth redistribution.
