"Action attempts to exchange a less desirable condition for a more desirable one, and costs are incurred to achieve a goal. The difference between the value of the costs and of the goal is called profit."
- Ludwig von Mises, Human Action
When an entrepreneur profits, it's because the demands of his customers were efficiently met. All other things being equal, entrepreneurial profit is thus a reward for reducing the felt uneasiness of others. The greater the profit, the greater the increment in relieved uneasiness and increased prosperity for their customers.
An excess in the total amount of entrepreneurial profits in a given population over the total amount of entrepreneurial losses would likewise be proof of a general increase in the standard of living throughout that population. Of course, the corollary implication is that an excess in the total amount of losses in a given population over the total amount of profits would be evidence of a decrease in the standard of living throughout that population.
The number of people blinded to this realization by their own envy is not insignificant. In the minds of many, profit is a symptom of usury, deception and coercive exploitation. To be fair, there are those who seek to gain by means of state violence rather than by entrepreneurial means, but to condemn all profit due to the actions of plunder seeking interventionists is to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Without entrepreneurial profit, there can be no large scale increases in the standard of living. The degree to which entrepreneurial profits are suppressed through taxation and regulation is the degree to which the cumulative standard of living for everyone is suppressed.
Taxing the rich for being rich in an attempt to "spread the wealth" can therefore only ever result in the opposite of the intended effect.