We have been conditioned to think that redistribution of wealth means moving money from top to bottom. Sadly it's really been moving money from bottom to the top. Over the past 40 years, tax policy has redistributed money from the masses to the rich.

Here is just a brief list of such policies which helped the richest 400 people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million people in the U.S.

The conventional wisdom foisted on us by the propaganda echo chamber convinced many that it is the rich and business that create jobs. It seems logical because they hire workers. However, is hiring a worker the same as creating a job? No.

Following my previous theme of using our intellect we might ask -- would the 1% and business hire if no one wants, needs or can afford their product or service? That would be an emphatic No. When the end consumer buys less than what businesses produce, businesses fire workers. If you subscribe to the idea that when they hire people, they are job-creators then the converse must be true -- when they fire people, they are job-killers. If the latter sounds silly, then the former is just as silly.

In my last column I spoke of Frank Luntz and how he focus-tests words which will elicit whatever desired response he wants. He concocts a vocabulary designed to win the issue du jour.

Think tanks like the Heritage foundation and Hoover Institute, advocacy groups like Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, newspapers like the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal editorials, television programs like FOX and the Kudlow Report, talk shows like Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, and Schnitt and bloggers like Malkin and Drudge and minions of the 1% then are dispatched to make their case framed with these scientifically tested words.

As I reflect on the year, I'm concerned that so much rancor and ill-will is fracturing the nation. Are we really that different from one another? I would venture to guess that if people were required to experience each other's socio-economic circumstance, class, religion and culture before we speak ill of each other, we would find more commonality than differences between us.

So why do we differ on so many issues -- religion, immigration, the economy, taxes, energy policy, regulation, the environment, national security, civil liberties, education, you name it.