You are describing some make-believe fantasy land - it took physicists decades of begging to get the measly couple billion for the LHC and we spend almost 250 b

You are describing some make-believe fantasy land - it took physicists decades of begging to get the measly couple billion for the LHC and we spend almost 250 billion a year on casinos every year. If that is your measure of privilidge, then a pitboss at casino has more privilidge than an average phisicist does. And by design they produce nothing on value and never will. Other proffeshions that command huge budgets include Architects and bricklayers - we spend 2 trillion on construction in a single year, that's more than all spending on Physics for all of recording history combined. Or doctors, city planners, bankers, etc. I don't know what beef you have with themm but at least run this mental experiment: Imagine a girl brings her boyfriend over for dinner, and he tells them her parents he a physicist working on the most cutting edge research. Is their first throught going to be 'oh, that's great, if they get married she will live a life of privilidge?'. If the parents had to advise between him and a heart surgeon, or a senior manager at a bank, a succefull lawyer, a developer at google - what do you think it will be? Bottomn line is this: when pressed on privilidge, you can't come up with anything measurable where physicists will be even be in the top 10, because such a metric does not exist. it's just some impression you formed that you are trying to justify.