The statement is inaccurate, or at the very least overgeneralized. My personal experience = husband with a PhD in high energy physics, highest tax bracket (through hard work, not inheritance), and an effective tax rate in the teens.
The current tax laws are not set up as some kind of punishment for high IQ, but they do punish hard work by taxing income earned for labor at a higher rate than the tax rate on investments. Argue about double taxation all you like, but the result is that as income gets over about 500K per year, the tax rate tends to begin to drop, and it continues to drop and drop and drop. The tax system is set up in such a way that those at the very low and very high end of the spectrum have very low rates of taxation, while the masses in the middle bear the bulk of the financial weight. And as someone who has been in just about every tax bracket during this lifetime, it disturbs me how effective those at the very high end of the financial spectrum have been at turning the anger of many in the middle class against those who have very little. Personally I believe that (very justified IMO) anger should really be aimed at those with the finances to control the puppet strings.
However, Austin, you are correct that physicians, who tend to earn less than 500K unless they're in cosmetic surgery, do get horribly screwed for all their hard work. Hopefully getting rich wasn't their main goal when choosing that career.
Hard work does not necessarily equal money, poor does not necessarily equal lazy, and genius IQ does not necessarily mean high tax rate.
