When it comes to education, it’s easy for people to see that overfocusing on “equal outcomes” and holding back high achievers leads to worse outcomes for everyone. But people's intuition for macroeconomics is not as good as it is for education. So we start talking about wealth disparity, and they fall into the exact same trap of thinking that focusing on "equalizing outcomes" is going to be a good idea. Reducing wealth inequality is about equalizing outcomes, which is analogous to overfocusing on closing the achievement gap. Focusing on closing the achievement gap means holding back high achievers (“tax the rich”) Instead, we should focus on maximizing all students’ learning (which does grow the achievement gap) and maximizing quality of life for everyone (which does grow wealth inequality)