Anyone living in the United States these days can simply look around and see that the income inequality gap appears to be widening between the wealthiest and poorest Americans. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the richest Americans incomes have now risen to a postwar record, as compared to the income of middle and lower class citizens.

Statistics from the Internal Revenue Service show that the richest 1% earned a whopping 21.2% of the total income reported to the IRS in 2005. These figures are up considerably from 2004, when the wealthiest 1% earned 19% of the income.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the income spectrum, the lower 50% earned only 12.8% of all income in the United States in 2005, down considerably from 13.4% just a year earlier. And because these statistics are now three years old, economists estimate that the disparity between the wealthiest and poorest in our country is actually much greater than the 2005 numbers would suggest.

This is even more troubling when you consider that all this comes at a time when the American economy (not to mention the global economy) is in a state of turmoil. With the ongoing credit crunch and the stagnation in wages, the American middle class is being squeezed, to put it mildly.

And while some politicians (notably Republicans, like presidential candidate Senator John McCain) talk of the dangers of “wealth redistribution,” the statistics by the IRS and other polling agencies would indicate that the United States has been going through a systematic redistribution of wealth over the past decade or two; a reverse Robin Hood effect that takes from the middle and lower classes, and gives to the ultra wealthy.

For many years, socialism has been a dirty word in the United States. Conservative politicians have railed against the evils of socialism creeping into American government. But an objective look at the state of American politics and economic life over the past few decades reveals that we have had socialism all along — socialism for the wealthy.

The recent $700+ billion-dollar bailout of Wall Street is a prime example of this: the government steps in to provide taxpayer- based relief to the wealthiest of the wealthy. When the government provides benefits to bail out those in trouble, isn’t that called socialism?

It would seem that the US government has been playing a hypocritical game, wherein the country employees the worst aspects of socialism, while ignoring the best aspects, such as building a large and affluent middle-class.

Meanwhile, so-called “socialist democracies” have become some of the richest nations in the world. Finland, Norway, Denmark and other northern European nations of a decidedly socialist bent, have now surpassed the United States in quality-of-life, GNP per capita, health and longevity statistics, and many other markers of prosperity and stability.

Perhaps it’s time to take a cue from our Scandinavian allies, and come to terms with the fact that socialism is not the evil bogeyman like we have been taught; and in fact, it could be the savior of the American middle class. Other socialist democracies have robust economies and significantly less income inequality. Don’t Americans deserve the same?

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