Actually, when it comes to my point 2, I'm really clueless how to achieve the redistribution I want: subsidies? You can redistribute income but even the people with little money are going to concentrate their buying on what most other people similar to them buy. Or anyway, their diversions from the rest won't show up [EDIT: I mean won't show up in a poll or in most other people's perceptions as more than a blip, if even that]. That's one reason we get concentration of wealth and power in the first place. (Another reason is that the culture then rigs things further to keep the power concentrated, with most people who don't have power nonetheless endorsing and perpetuating the reasons for the inequality. That's my hypothesis, anyway.)