An interesting note to the issue of inequality. I am reading "The Origin of Wealth" by E Beinhocker who describes a study called "Sugarscape" which attempted to model asset aquisition using some simple rules (the agents were placed at random in areas of differetn asset abundance, had different needs for assets, could buy and sell between themselves to meet needs, could save, and tended to move towards areas that had more assets).

There was no political bais one way or the other.

The results were very consistent, a few individuals accumulated massive ammounts of assets, with large numbers of agents having very little asset accumulation.

The results follow power law principles (a natural phenomenon describing among other things earthquakes, biological extinctions, the number of people's sexual partners) - few few ultra large events, many very small events. I read a newspaper report a few years ago of an experiment on passenger plane evacutations, some people always got out regardless of where on the plane they were, some people never got out, even if they were sitting at the emergency exit.

Maybe we can do nothing to change inequality (it is a predestined or natural part of humans and complex systems??) in the longer term, we certainly have put a huge amount of effort into it and it seems to be without result.

Australia's economy is going to slowly end up like it did around 1987-9, unemployment is soon going to sky rocket when the price of oil reaches $US95 and then even a posible $US120 for a barrel of WTI. Our economy is dependant on this one commodity.
we must reconstruct our transit systems, City Rail might have to work!
when the price of oil goes from $US72 to $US95 when the US Winter sets in, maybe the "you've never had it so good" commnt might not be comeing out of anyone's mouth in the government.
Houseing commission estates are generally aroun train stations in the suburbs, and they have the highest rate of unemployment in Australian (accept the homeless). if only the people around our existing transportation system could go some where ease and maybe we could put the land to better use, houseing productive people, with jobs!
if States lik NSW could kill two birds with one stone and built ports and a high speed rail network with cheaper houseing, which people slowly pay off. if we could built a city with the unemployed nd create jobs in that city, does the economy win? therefore does everyone else win? YES!

for goodness sake Liberalcynic, get thee to a spellchecker,PRONTO!

goddess?

At least Liberalcinic had something to say about policy .
Well may you think your a Goddess but me thinks your very rude.
Is that all you can add?
This is not the first time I have seen you trying to put another poster down because of missing a few letters.
You dont walk on a higher moral groud and apparently Mummy and daddy were busy when others parents were teaching their kids a few manners,
So what- theres a few letters left out.
I do it all the time.
Some peoples brain work quicker than their hands. Some people have very old computers that wont run spell checks.
Try being a nicer person. Who knows you may end up being a lot happier too because its clear your taking out your frustrations on this other poster who make some very worth while comments
Regardless or not if I agree with them.