How Can We Achieve Equality?

Equality can be achieved by implementing a totalitarian police state that will ensure that no one is better off than anyone else, no one has tastes or interests that differ from anyone else, and no one has knowledge or abilities that anyone else lacks. The simplest (though certainly not effective) way of achieving this is through extermination of populations that are perceived as being better off; i.e., millions of dead Kulaks, Jews, Chinese, Cambodians, and so forth were the products of the better-off getting what they had coming to them. When faced with someone "better off", it was much easier to equalize things by killing them instead of emulating them. However, the exterminations never achieved their goals, and we have yet to reach a condition of a perfect ant-like existence -- where everyone is identical and has no desires other than to kill themselves in defense of their leader.

In the USA, there are no mass exterminations -- but there is an ongoing popular movement to increase equality. We have "Two Americas", we have "the common good", and we have demagogues inciting the masses over the differences between CEO and "worker" salaries. Our ever-increasing standards of living are ignored, and instead, we are encouraged to focus on how much better the next guy has it -- which is nothing more than pouring acid into the emotional open wound of envy. In different contexts, these demagogues would be committing the criminal offense of incitement to riot, but when spoken in the context of "justice" or "democracy" or some other feel-good vernacular, they come across as "compassionate" or "caring" or anything else that is the opposite of what they really are -- cynical opportunists creating crises where there are none, and counting on mob emotions to grant them power over others.

Is there any reason to suppose that equality is worth achieving? Would you want to wake up in a world where you are the same, or equal, to everyone else? Would you want to be treated the same way as everyone else, regardless of what you produce or what you desire? Would you want to be denied anything that might make you happier than anyone else?

When people are punished for being better-off, then why would they want to try being better-off? And how would anyone benefit when everyone loses the desire to be better off?