No, it's not a senseless half-thought, any more than "no" is a senseless half-thought when put in context. I thought I could provide that context for you, but apparently you're too thick to understand.
Among the less wealthy, perhaps the redistribution of wealth discourages earning through accomplishment, as the redistribution is in their favour. They, then, might make a living for themselves with less accomplishment then they might have been pushed towards otherwise. Among those who are less wealthy and do not aspire to reach any further than mediocrity, then certainly; redistribution of wealth will not help your case, but rather make you more content to muddle along without a serious education. Sure.
But if one is rich, and one has a finance manager or hired investor to allow you to simply attend fancy cocktail parties and slack off, then redistribution is going to hurt in the wallet. These same people you were talking about when you said that
If the rich weren't sucessfully earning their own money, then the rich would get poorer and poorer until they weren't rich anymore.
when making the point that anyone who's rich isn't going to stay rich through entitlement are staying rich through no effort on their own part. I'm not talking about punishing anyone. I'm simply saying that if, in your idealist version of America, the rich only stay rich through hard work, that directly conflicts with your views about how the rich are paying more than their fair share of taxes. The rich are paying their current taxes, and some of them don't even have to work hard to be rich. The logical consequence is to tax the rich further and stop giving them so many stinking tax cuts, along with giving some of that money to people who need it; that will certainly make the rich more determined to accomplish.
Then, I'll consider the point of the lower classes. With not much money, many cannot afford to go to college. This barrier hits hard despite any achievement on the part of the student who would like to recieve a college education. I'm certain that you've heard the story before: kid wants education, parents can't afford it, kid tries hard, kid gets scholarship, kid can't go to school because his parents have become dependent on the income he brings in with his part-time job, kid takes job at gas station, kid earns cruddy wages because working at gas stations used to be a better gig than it was when his dad was his age, kid becomes adult, gets married to someone he doesn't really even love but is attracted to the hips of, gets drunk, again, and again, and again, abuses wife, but not after getting her pregnant. Rinse and repeat.
With just a bit more money, the parents of the kid could have taken care of his three other siblings without the kid's income, he can go to school on a scholarship, try hard, get a degree, and have a nice life with a charming young lady he meets at school. He might have a couple of kids, read to them at night, take an active role in his daughter's education by helping out with studying, and he will probably earn enough money to send
both of his kids to college, and the upward cycle can continue.
Redistribution of wealth encourages the rich and the poor to try harder and accomplish more with what they have, rather than encouraging laziness like you say it does.