We're all in this together

In what together? It is one of the those meaningless statements that means different things to different people.

'All in this together' has traditionally been used to emphasise solidarity and was being used to disguise the opposite when I started this thread.

There has always been rich and poor and inequality in society. go back a couple of hundred years to see real inequality. In fact there was a paper once that modelled money flow in an economy. the maths used was the same as that used to model the flow of dislocations in metals and how they tangle. What that physist found was it makes little difference how you rig the tax system money always sticks to the few. Those few change with time but it is always a few. So in short as history shows trying to make society more equal never actually works. All you do is move the inequality around a bit and sometimes not even that. I am not saying politics is pointless but we often want politicians to solve problems that can't be solved and we then pay little attention to the problems that can be solved.

It is highly unlikely that a physicist's thought experiment can give any useful indication of what can be achieved politically.

Of course, the vast majority of governments in human history have been oligarchies of one kind or another, and distribution of wealth has been uneven in most societies we know of (not, by the way, in many so-called 'primitive' societies, where inequality is often centred around honour and other immaterial goods). However, there are still intriguing question marks over seemingly extraordinary societies like the 'Harappan' civilisation, of which our knowledge is still far from complete.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWpccdlQ_Gs

This will probably only mean something to Ludwig (not that he will click on it :) ).