There has always been the rich and there's always been the poor. But there are times when there is what I believe to be a concerted effort to widen the gap between the rich and the poor. And we are living in one of those times right now.

You see, if you can make people poorer, you can control them more easily. If they're richer, they have more power and more choices . . . and therefore they're harder to control.

But you can't just blatantly make people poorer. You have to do it covertly. You have to do it in a way in which they don't know it's you doing it to them.

Therefore, since the average person doesn't really know that much about money, governments prey upon them as a result.

You see, what governments do is that they have you buy and sell with a currency. Then they dilute the purchasing power of that currency by making a heck of a lot more of the currency by printing more money.

As they print more money, your money becomes worth less.

Now, they don't ever come right out and say they're doing this. Why? If enough people knew what they were doing, the politicians would get voted out of office.

So what they have to do is create diversions. For instance, one of the long-term scapegoats has been Wall Street.

The government will tell you that greedy Wall Streeters are to blame for the prices of everything going up, from oil to food, etc.

While Wall Streeters might wish they had such power, only governments via central banks have deep enough pockets to make this happen.

So, back to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. The best way to say it is this: there are investors and then there are consumers.

If you're strictly a consumer, the government is going to print more money and make you poorer as it dilutes the value of your currency and you'll become more controlled.

However, if you choose to set your standard of living to where you live UNDER your means (no matter how small or large it is) and you invest the difference in stocks, then you're going to be on the correct side of the money-printing game.

A prime, real-time example of this stares us in the face when we look to what's going on in Japan right now.

Consumers and mere savers are getting crucified.

As I was recently looking at the chart of a Japanese yen exchange-traded fund, which tracks the value of the currency, I saw that it's dropped by more than 30 percent in just over two years' time.

On the other hand, the investors in Japan's stock market have seen the Nikkei go up literally 100 percent during that same period. (Investors know that in order to not have their money lose value, they have to put it in something that goes up in value over time, like stocks.)

This currency dilution game doesn't just happen in Japan, even though that's one of the prime places it's happening right now.

It's also happened during the past few years in Europe with the euro and it happens regularly here in the U.S. with our dollar.

So the question is, "What do you want for you and your lineage?"

Do you want to grow poorer and poorer or work harder and harder just to have the same lifestyle you have today? Do you want your lineage to have that same outcome?

If not, you've got to adjust your lifestyle to a place to where you can invest. If you don't, you're doomed to being poorer and more controlled by the government.

Oh, I know, I can hear a few of you now. My family only makes $60,000 per year so I can't afford to invest. Plus, I've got kids on their way to college, etc.

Well, what I can tell you is where there's a will, there's a way.

For instance, I've heard of two men who both had a low income and had families to support. One was a janitor for a stock brokerage firm and the other was a security guard for another brokerage firm.

They never made a high income. Yet both of them ended up millionaires. How so? They always kept their spending far less than their income. Then they took the difference and invested it for the next 30 to 40 years in the stock market and they ended up being millionaires.

So why doesn't everyone end up millionaires if these guys did it? 1) Many people don't believe it's possible for them to be millionaires, and 2) they're not willing to make the lifestyle adjustments for long enough to make it happen.

Their "living larger" now will cause them to live smaller later on. However, those who will make the appropriate adjustments now and for long enough have a bright future ahead of themselves.

The silver lining in all of this is that you now know the rules of the game. You know what governments are doing. And you know how to combat it. However, your biggest obstacle to overcome won't be the government. It will be overcoming yourself . . . your own thinking.

Will you make the needed changes in your thinking in order to ensure that you're able to be an investor? If you're willing to make the change, you'll set your lineage on a different course.

God bless!

About the Author: Sean Hyman
Sean Hyman is a member of the Moneynews Financial Brain Trust. Click Here to read more of his articles. He is also the editor of Ultimate Wealth Report. Discover more by Clicking Here Now.