We all have different aptitudes, different responses to different incentives & inhibitors; different perspectives, focus, objective, motivations, etc.. The very notion that income inequality is a problem reflects a dearth of reason on the subject of human achievement.
Conservatives need to stop allowing "politically correct" bullies to intimidate dissent from Collectivist/Egalitarian efforts to tear down our culture of achievement. Understand the neurotic compulsion they have employed to control the susceptible; understand that it is not a rational thing; not an idealistic thing; not an altruistic thing.
See Compassion Or Compulsion?.
This is the same compulsion that justifies our loony immigration policy; our bull in a china closet efforts at "nation building"; our insane Federal meddling in local education, law enforcement, health care, and the social re-engeneering of local communities.
You are both right in part.
It is a manufactured problem, not in the sense that the imposition of the “Great Society” intended destroy the middle class, but it perverted the incentives and kept a greater portion of the population on welfare.
Combined with minimum wage laws that price low skilled and young workers out of the workforce, (and increase automation) it is more beneficial to stay on welfare, food stamps, public housing, etc... than to try and get work.
This impacted the poor in the 70s and 80s but since Obama waivered the 90s welfare reform out of existence, it is now biting the lower middle class. Combine this with the lack of actual border control which increases the population of low skilled and inexperienced workers.
This sucks everyone down, except for the very wealthy. It is Obama and his fellow travelers who are creating the inequality they condemn.