This is a more general and larger problem where society is constantly bending over backwards to cater to the 2% lowest performers.
If you added up all the costs of the people at the lowest extremes (by various metrics), I'd venture to guess that we could increase our prosperity (by various metric) by an order of magnitude.
Example: When I started my startup, we made the decision not to hire any salesperson who wasn't proficient in using a computer (we have no IT support line). We also made the decision to not sell to any customer that couldn't figure out how to use the website (we have no telephone support).
I cannot even tell you how multiplicative the benefits are. The 2% employees who couldn't use a computer or clients who couldn't use the website were responsible for 90% of the issues we had at my prior company. Everything from regulatory complaints, to lawsuits, to ad-hoc report requests, to virus infected PCs, to... the list goes on and on.
Having smart people is great. Not dealing with idiots is equally important.