I'm not saying anything about stifling. I'm saying hypothetically you can take the top richest people's incomes and redistribute it to everyone. Since everyone

I'm not saying anything about stifling. I'm saying hypothetically you can take the top richest people's incomes and redistribute it to everyone. Since everyone else would then have more income, everyone else would be paying more in taxes; counter-balancing the loss in taxes the richest people would no longer be paying. The federal income wouldn't perfectly balance though, as some of that re-distributed income would be taxed at lower tax brackets. However, the government could always re-adjust the tax brackets as necessary to make it zero-sum. Anyhow, the broader point is that inequality isn't a requirement when it comes to federal taxes.