Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not

Any cash given to the poorer classes and taken from the middle classes likely has greater quality of life value to the poorer classes - because it would be used for things that are more essential to life.

This means the quality of life loss to the middle classes is more than offset by quality of life gain to the poorer classes. And the poorer classes have many more people.

By some ethical standards, this makes it unequivocally beneficial to redistribute.

(I don't actually agree with that approach, because money in some hands is more potent for creating benefit to others, than in other hands. But I think the parent's argument, that it's bad because the middle class would suffer, is essentially a "poor people don't matter" argument.)

A Homeric talent was a unit of weight, hence the half-talent "of gold" as a prize. A talent of silver would weigh the same but have less value.

The Hebrew "talent" (kikar) was also a unit of weight.

The later Latin talentum borrowed the existing weight measure and the Greek word τάλαντον and by the time of the parable of the talents, this word already carried the rather heavy meaning of "58.9 kg." (from your link above).

So a talent in the modern metaphorical sense of "talented person" means a person carrying a heavy weight, and a heavy responsibility. If a single talent is almost 60 kg, imagine the unlucky person with five talents placed on them! Perhaps it would be better to have a genius than to be talented, though neither one makes you rich.

> For the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey.

The only thing we can say with confidence about these "goods" is that they were heavy, and not necessarily something you want... especially if they are to be repaid "with usury" at some future undisclosed time of reckoning, as in the story!

1. You don't have a choice about investing in the future of your own country. You do that when you pay taxes. Like it or not. It does not matter.

2. Venture capitalists do not fund far fetched ideas, they FOMO lemming-like fund whatever every other idiot is already funding.

Lots of people in favor of UBI simultaneously hate the idea of merit-based "big money" grants for ideas. Maybe because they don't want public opportunity programs to dry up the pool of broke-ass idealistic post-docs with big ideas and no chance to ever see any of them get funded.

If someone is working at a job most hours, most the remaining hours caring for family, constantly having to chase more work because they are on the breadline, mentally stressed all the time, never getting enough rest and sleep because of the demands on them, cognitively impaired by stress and malnourishment, they may have lots of creative and innovative thoughts, they can be stuck for decades unable to build a prototype due to lack of time, energy, and a place to build it.

(Little web-based things may be a relative exception, because people can do those at home, on the side, and while looking after others. Maybe that's why we have so many of them, and so many people trying to make more.)

Aside from personal circumstances, at the business level, there is a reason investment is done in business growth, and why many businesses try to borrow, rather than waiting to save up the cash for new investments.

For some things, development just stalls without resources and breathing room.

Even when successful, it can be greatly slowed.