Forbes magazine has just come out with its rankings of the richest people in the world. The fact that the richest 200 people in the world have a net worth over one trillion dollars has drawn much attention. We have more billionaires than ever and far more millionaires as well. At the same time, the number of poor is about the same as it has been for years, about 36 million. On talk shows some have suggested that the gap between the rich and the poor has grown too large. The solution to this income and wealth gap, according to some, is to tax the rich more in order to redistribute the wealth, echoing Huey Long’s cry of "share the wealth." Is it really so simple to help the poor, that all our elected officials have to do is don green tights and play Robin Hood?

It just isn't that simple. The idea that the wealthy, or anyone else for that matter, will do exactly the same things, no matter what taxes they pay, is just wrong. One fundamental characteristic of human beings is that we respond to rewards and penalties. Psychologists are careful to point out that what one person sees as a reward is not necessarily a reward to another, and what one person sees as a penalty is not a penalty to all.

However, when rewards and penalties are stipulated to be paid in money, any confusion between reward and penalty is cleared up. Money is what I call a "generalizable reward," a reward to all. Except for a few things that people will not do for money (e.g., help a friend and intimate relations), the more money one gets for doing something, the more of that something one will try to do. By the same logic, the more some activity, such as earning income, is penalized, the less one will do.

If we raise the tax rate on the rich in order to provide for the poor or for any other reason, the rich will do less to earn income. They will take fewer risks, work fewer hours, and invest fewer dollars in the stock market. The bigger the government's take is out of peoples' paychecks, the smaller those paychecks will become.

I am reminded of the story of the Little Red Hen. She found some grains of wheat and asked her fellow barn animals if they would help her plant the wheat. They each responded, "no, not I." She latter asked them to help her harvest the grain, mill the grain into flour, and bake bread from the flour. With each request for help from the hen each animal responded with that familiar refrain, "no, not I." They all wanted to share in the bread, once it was baked. Suppose the other animals voted to force the Little Red Hen to share her bread, passing a "bread tax" to ensure that all animals get an equal piece of bread. The result is obvious. Little Red Hen's barnyard comrades, after a while, begin to wonder why she no longer bakes bread.

Two additional points should be raised. First, the 36 million poor aren't the same people from year to year. People are constantly moving from one income category to another. Some of the poor strike it rich while some of the rich lose it all. Medical students and law students surviving on food stamps graduate and begin practices. Some with good jobs retire with inadequate financial resources.

Second, we should not be concerned with income gaps at all. The poor do not become worse off because others become richer. If anything, the lot of the poor improves as the rich get richer because of the greater opportunities for charitable giving.

While the obligation that the wealthy have to help the poor is undeniable, the obligation is a personal one and should largely be voluntary. For every dollar given through charity, there are two dollars of benefits: one to the recipient and one to the donor. The donor benefits by a dollar or more or the dollar would not have been given. When taxed to provide public charity, sometimes the "forced donor" will sometimes spend up to a dollar to save a dollar in taxes, giving their money to lawyers and accountants instead of the poor.

Worst of all, concern about income gaps, about how much richer the rich are than the poor, instead of being concerned about the condition of the poor is symptomatic of a bigger social ill. That disease is envy, the green-eyed monster that robs us of all happiness as we become troubled by the fact that someone else has more of something than we. Better to be thankful for what you have and to be glad that someone else has done well.