The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. We hear this little snippet of wisdom all the time and according to a recent article in the New York Times, “Income Gap Is Widening, Data Shows” by David Cay Johnston, the disparity in income between rich and poor is the worst it has been since 1929. Mr. Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, writes almost specifically about Taxes. Now call me crazy, but as someone with an economics degree myself, I find it hard to accept financial truths from someone who spent six years in college studying economics but failed to earn a degree (according to wikipedia.com).

In order to be fair, since this was this first of Mr. Johnston’s articles I’ve read, I did go back and read several more of his pieces. The central theme in most of his work centers around the usual class warfare debate; the rich people are bilking the rest of us and they are doing it by cheating. Now before I commence to break down the fallacies in this logic I will point out that he and I agree on one very important thing; our tax code is broken and needs to be replaced, but that is where the line is drawn.

Almost every article I have read concerning income disparity in America seems to focus on one single cause for the perceived problem; rich people are lying cheating manipulators that take advantage of us lowly working class people. They make the assumption that if someone is rich they must have acquired that wealth by unsavory means, but when you boil the argument down to the simplest layer you will almost always find wealth envy at the core.

Don’t be shocked, it’s O.K., all of us are guilty of participating in the wealth envy game. We see someone in a nice car and think, what does he have that I don’t? What makes him so special? Spoiled rich kid! Etc. Etc. We all do it; it is human nature, but how many of us follow up these evil creeping thoughts with something more positive? Something like; I wonder how they made their money? What can I do to be more successful?

The simple truth behind the income disparity in America, or anywhere else in the world that embraces a capitalistic society, is that the successful (rich) people continue to make choices and decisions that generate more success, while the unsuccessful (poor) people continue to make decisions that lead to failure. I know; the truth hurts, but it doesn’t stop it from being the truth.

There will always be an income disparity in America as long as we remain somewhat economically free. There will always be someone with more stuff than you, but no one, with the exception of government, is stopping any of us from attaining the same success as the other guy. You can choose to embrace success, you can choose to remain in the status quo, or you can choose to be a failure, but it is your choice. The sooner all of us realize that the evil rich people, and the huge corporations we like to demonize, are the very things that drive our economy, provide jobs for the people, and bring forth innovation that increases the comfort of our lives, the better off we will be.

So while there certainly are evil rich people, there are also evil middle-class people and evil poor people. Evil is not class specific. If we can get past the wealth envy maybe we can spend our time dealing with the real reasons for the expanding disparity; government regulation, enormous entitlement, income redistribution, and political interference in the free-market system. These are the weapons slowly killing the middle-class. A bulk majority of the tax burden currently falls on the middle income sector and the wealthy pay the remaining. The bottom 50% of income earners in America, those who make less than $30,000 per year, pay only 3% of the total income tax burden. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who is getting the shaft here; Hint: It’s not the “poor” people.

In their quest for an American socialist utopia, class warfare artists like Mr. Johnston will continue to blame everyone but the true culprits, and those of us in the real world better wake up. As our dreams continue to become more difficult to attain, and we are handed layer on layer of burden as we battle to achieve success, they are already 97% of the way to completing their goal. Soon they will have lifted the entire weight of the tax burden on the whole of their voting populous, and those of us who have chosen a life of substance will be forced to work even more overtime to ensure their healthcare, childcare, housing, 35-hour work week, tropical vacation, and brand new car.

- Lance Martin