Fair Share?

[SmartyPants]

Among the less wealthy, redistribution of wealth discourages earning through accomplishment, as the redistribution is in their favor. They, then, make a living for themselves with less accomplishment then they 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 thier case, but rather make them more content to muddle along without a serious education. Sure.

People who aspire to rise above their poor background don't need the government to redistribute the wealth in order to become successful in America.  Herman Cain, Barack Obama, Rick Perry, Oprah Winfrey, Jim Carrey, John D. Rockefeller, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and many other people were able to overcome their poor background without wealth redistribution.
My grandfather was the son of poor immigrant parents who had eight children.  Without wealth being redistributed, my grandfather was able to attend college and become a sucessful engineer at IBM.

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.

That is an untrue stereotype portrayed on television.  After you watch Jersey Shore, you probably assumed all Italian Americans are sex craved, steroid-using, drunks with fake tans.

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.

Nothing encourages the rich to work harder, then not letting them keep the money they earn.  With your logic, the rich will be the most productive when 100% of their income is taken away by the government, because they will be "more determined to accomplish" when they are further taxed.

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.

You believe a person who doesn't have a college education "gets drunk" and "abuses wife".  Your serotyping is rather offensive.  People without a college education can be respectable members of their communities, while the college educated can be drunk wife-beaters.

Also, I seriously doubt you know anyone who was near the top of their class in high school and was unable to find the money to attend college.  On the other hand, I know many people who were able to attend college despite their poor background.  Two of my friends are sons of illegal immigrants who speak little to no english.  Even though neither of them were good high school students, they both attend community college.  Because higher educations is massively subsidized, most of their college bill is covered by financial aid.  My friend's brother has almost funded three years at the University of Texas by applying for some of the hundreds of unclaimed scholarships.  If he could swallow his pride and apply for minority only scholarships, then he have much more of his education funded.  My mother's friend got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 18 without becoming a drunk wife beater.  Since he had a hard time learning that having sex on "safe days" isn't a proper form of birth control, he ended up having three kids by the time he was 23. Being in a large Catholic family with nine brothers and sisters, his parents couldn't help him pay for college or supporting his kids.  In order to pay for college and raise his kids, he recieved financial aid and joined the national guard.  He ended up graduating from University of Nebraska with a masters in Marketing despite his poor background.  Due to the large amount of government spending on education and the numerous private scholarships offered, almost every high achiever has a chance to attend a public college.  If financial aid and scholarships aren't enough, then there is always government subsidized student loans.

Your suggestion that we should take money from high income earners and then directly give it to lower income earners in hope that the lower income earners will use that money for college is ridiculous and naive.  It is like giving cash to a drug addict so that the drug addict would have enough money to pay for rehab.

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.

Of course people will work harder when they are given money that they don't earn.  That is why nobody quits their job after winning the lottery. ::)