I recently read an article in which the author was complaining about income inequality. He drew what he referred to as an "inescapable conclusion" that when one person lives a life of luxury in a nation or a world of finite resources, others are forced to have less. He implied that we need to have more central government planning and control to more equitably distribute resources.

I disagree. To me, that's the same perspective that would have been shared by the hunter/gatherers of 10,000 years ago, who were always on the verge of starvation. They would have been terrified at the prospect of a world populated by 6 billion people, and probably would have had the same zero-sum mentality the author exhibits.

Of course, what we really have today with 6 billion people are standards of living, life expectancies, varieties of foods, products and services that the hunter/gatherers could only dream of - all courtesy of the free market system.

The fact is, life is not a zero sum game. Free markets (capitalism) by their very nature create new and better ways of doing things. People were terrified about how they were going to light lamps when the world was growing short of whales. We now have a better way. Capitalism provides incentives to deal with the finite nature of the planet. Constraints - natural or man-made - cause prices to move and create incentives to find alternatives.

Compare the development of new surgical/pharmaceutical/health-care treatments under capitalism versus centrally planned economies like communism or socialism. Virtually all progress has come from free-market economies. Planned economies have directly benefited from the technological improvements coming out of capitalism - it is rarely the other way around.

As I continued to read the article mentioned above it became clear that the author was suggesting that if people don't give enough money to the poor to provide more economic balance in society, government should essentially play Robin Hood and take from the rich to give to the poor. Based on the historical record of centralized government power, I am terrified by the author's suggestion.

Take, for example, the comparative experience of North and South Korea. Fifty years

ago they were in essentially the same economic circumstances following the Korean War. Today, people in North Korea are dying of starvation - an estimated 2 million just since the turn of the century. Under the capitalistic society of South Korea, people have a standard of living well beyond that of North Korea.

Similarly, you can compare Taiwan and mainland China before China opened up to capitalism and see the same thing. The higher standard of living is associated with political and economic freedom. In fact, I would suggest that the higher standard of living is the direct result of that freedom. I also assert that China's opening up to capitalism has released hundreds of millions of people from poverty.

If the author's hypothesis were correct, poor people everywhere would be flocking to get into the paradise of totalitarian systems. I think it's pretty clear that people risk their lives to flee the systems the author is advocating. Even the soft socialism of Mexico causes people to flee to the American system.

Of course, the author is probably advocating a more progressive tax system. In that case I would point out that in the United States, the bottom 40 percent of taxpayers pay a net zero percent of income taxes due to the earned income tax credit. The top 20 percent of taxpayers earn 50 percent of income and pay more than 80 percent of income taxes. Even the Social Security system is set up so that the lower-income people get substantially more for every dollar contributed to the system than upper-income contributors.

Historical statistics indicate that income inequality increases and the percentage of taxes paid by the highest 20 percent of income earners decreases when tax rates are increased. But when tax rates are decreased, income inequality decreases and the percentage of income taxes paid by the highest income earners increases. Interestingly, a recent study suggests that people who advocate lower tax rates overwhelmingly donate more of their income to charity than those who advocate higher tax rates.