If you want some young people to succeed spectacularly, then you also have to allow some (a lot) of young people to fail spectacularly.
How does the second statement follow logically from the first? How does putting a floor under the bottom of humanity automatically put a ceiling over the top?
I think of it as two normal distributions. One is tight in the centre with few outliers at either end, the other is flatter. More excellence and more rubbish.
The former is Japan, while the latter is your baseline - I believe we were using USA.
It is common to see normal distributions, but rarer to see them skewed in the way you are proposing.
Note, I don't believe this is deterministic at the individual level. People choose to do crime or to think differently. Nevertheless, at the level of society, the law of large numbers applies.
People choose to do crime or to think differently.
One of the interesting conclusions one can draw from studies of physics and biology is that it's highly likely that "choice" is really a very complex chemical process, rather than some independent act that a unified person entity performs in complete isolation from their brain and body.
Assuming for the sake of argument that this is completely true, I think we can make significant progress in improving people's ability to "choose" by approaching the problem of detrimental or criminal choices from a biological and physical perspective -- that is, to use a rational, scientific approach to influencing brains and bodies as highly complex, sentient physical objects, rather than a moral, philosophical approach to distributing punishment and reward.
>> it's highly likely that "choice" is really a very complex chemical process, rather than some independent act that a unified person entity performs in complete isolation from their brain and body
I see this as a false dichotomy. It's the old mind/body duality again. Your assertion about chemicals is not wrong, but you'll run into trouble if you act as if it negates the subjective perspective.
If the subjective perspective is an illusion, an emergent behavior of a complex reality, then wouldn't we do better by trying to alter the reality (biochemistry and environment) directly than by abstractly influencing the illusion with notions of reward and punishment?
There is absolutely no reason it has to be a normal distribution. But let's say you started with one for the sake of simplicity. You could shift the peak a very small amount left (with taxes) and use that money to bring the entire left edge up to the same standard of living. This would have next to no effect on the right edge, the ones succeeding spectacularly.
How does the second statement follow logically from the first? How does putting a floor under the bottom of humanity automatically put a ceiling over the top?