Touche

But not necessarily game, set, match.  Bear with me as I think this through.  Mark Thoma brings us to a Bruce Bartlett commentary regarding some logic used by Professor Allan Meltzer.  (So if you want to refer to me for referring you to the above link, I think the easiest way would be to copy and paste that sentence, and add "via Wayne Liou, wannabe economics blogger").

There is evidence that policies don't do very well equalizing distribution of income, so Professor Meltzer denounces the point of policies.  Bruce Bartlett counters that if policies don't matter, then it must be that higher taxes don't have as much of an effect on the (dis)incentive to work, which is mentioned in a later Thoma post (original article by Diamond).  I don't think this is quite the right conclusion, but I agree in a sense.

Policies don't have an effect on equalizing distribution of income, not necessarily on productivity of the economy.  Distributive policies could lower the income growth of both rich and poor people, so Professor Meltzer's warning makes sense.  However, I've read that most people don't care about absolute wealth, they care about relative wealth, so the wealthy folk shouldn't be too considered about feeling poorer; the poor are poorer as well.  So, since feelings won't be hurt with respect to feeling rich, we're looking at economic productivity/efficiency.  Which brings us to the Diamond research, which says "Bring on the tax man".