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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums"Rome was bankrupted by wealthy landowners using control of the senate to shift taxation downward"
The myth that the Roman empire fell because of economic problems caused by inflation dies hard, and you can find it used by Austrians and free market libertarians...
(5) The economic problems that the Roman empire faced after the third century AD were of course real, but not the result of the simple morality tale about inflation spun by apologists for free market economics:
“According to the monetarist view, what buried Rome was inflation stemming from government spending and adulteration of the coinage, coupled with what Mikhail Rostovtzoff deemed to be over-taxation of the middle class. But what actually led to fiscal and monetary breakdown in the every major society from Babylonia through the Roman and Byzantine empires to more modern times was the ability of large property owners to break free of taxes. The Roman treasury was bankrupted by wealthy landowners using their control of the senate to shift the fiscal burden onto classes below them. Lacking the means to pay, these classes were driven below the break-even point. As debt deflation drained the economy of money, barter arrangements ensued. Trade collapsed and the economy shrunk into local self-sufficient manor units” (Hudson 2003: 53).
In other words, it was the super rich and propertied classes who evaded taxation and forced a highly regressive tax system on the middle classes and poor. The economic problems can be related to the structure and unfair burden of taxation, not taxation per se.
(6) The effects of deflation and debt deflation are ignored by Austrian economists and others. The Roman Republic (which existed before the empire) in fact faced excessive debt and deflationary periods in the first century BC, especially in the 90s and 80s BC, which caused serious social and economic problems (for deflation in the Republic, see Barlow 1980; Nicolet 1971; cf. Verboven 1997). Thus it was not just inflation that had undesirable effects, but also deflation (see my post “Debt Deflationary Crisis in the Late Roman Republic,” June 16, 2011).
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2011/06/inflation-and-fall-of-roman-empire.html
The shifting of taxation downward has been an ongoing project of the ruling class for decades.
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Recursion
(56,582 posts)... and do not admit of simple descriptions. (Best line my professor ever said about Rome.)
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)and economics is a master key.
mick063
(2,424 posts)Worked well to initially build the empire. The problem is that the further the footprint expands, the more expensive it is to maintain the holdings and the more difficult it is to centrally control the politics of the populace.
Not to dissimilar from the vast British empire that eventually collapsed or more recently, the Soviet Union. The military assets required to secure vast holdings from both foreign intrusion and internal dissent is considerable. The bottom line is that the empire must yield enough monetary return to not only pay for the military required to hold on to it, but also inherently provide resources worth making it desirable to begin with.
Too often, lands have been conquered for military/political strategic value as opposed to economic return. Once that ideological shift occurs, the tax burden overwhelms the populace. It is the sole reason why the infant United States won independence from the mighty British. The cost of holding the colony exceeded the economic return.
As for modern times, the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan yielded very little economic value and the campaigns began for the sole purpose of military/political strategic value. In effect, we have repeated the same historical mistakes as previous great expanding empires.
We are doomed to fail as a nation if the ideology does not change.
Ikonoklast
(23,973 posts)Our current slide into becoming a fascist state is the beginning of the endgame.
The Chinese will do the same thing before the end of this century.
Sherman A1
(38,958 posts)Interesting.
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth
dembotoz
(16,922 posts)thank you for the post
marmar
(79,739 posts)
gopiscrap
(24,733 posts)Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Some of the wealthy had over 400 slaves.
Unlike today, back then you fed and housed your slaves 
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)value above the cost of their feed.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)Sure, there were a lot of slaves working the aquaducts, but some wealthy people had over 400 slaves as evbidenced by their surviving wills. Stats are not very abundant so this question remains debated, but the percentage of slaves rose, particularly in Italy and especially in Rome. To too great an extent, slaves were servants of the 1%'ers, not unlike service work today. There is an immense economic difference between productive work and waiting on the rich. One benefits the community and the other deprives the community of production.
HiPointDem
(20,729 posts)products.
they weren't sitting at home feeding grapes to their masters.
Slavery in ancient Rome played an important role in society and the economy. Besides manual labor, slaves performed many domestic services, and might be employed at highly skilled jobs and professions. Teachers, accountants, and physicians were often slaves. Greek slaves in particular might be highly educated. Unskilled slaves, or those condemned to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills. Their living conditions were brutal, and their lives short.
Slaves worked in a wide range of occupations that can be roughly divided into five categories: household or domestic; imperial or public; urban crafts and services; agriculture; and mining.[38]
Epitaphs record at least 55 different jobs a household slave might have,[39] including barber, butler, cook, hairdresser, handmaid (ancilla), wet nurse or nursery attendant, teacher, secretary, seamstress, accountant, and physician.[9] A large elite household (a domus in town, or a villa in the countryside) might be supported by a staff of hundreds.[39] The living conditions of slaves attached to a domus (the familia urbana), while inferior to those of the free persons they lived with, were sometimes superior to that of many free urban poor in Rome.[40] Household slaves likely enjoyed the highest standard of living among Roman slaves, next to publicly owned slaves, who were not subject to the whims of a single master.[35] Imperial slaves were those attached to the emperor's household, the familia Caesaris.[39]
In urban workplaces, the occupations of slaves included fullers, engravers, shoemakers, bakers, mule drivers, and prostitutes. In general, slaves "had no right to refuse their masters' sexual advances."[citation needed] Farm slaves (familia rustica) probably lived in more healthful conditions. Roman agricultural writers expect that the workforce of a farm will be mostly slaves, managed by a vilicus, who was often a slave himself.[39]
Slaves numbering in the tens of thousands were condemned to work in the mines or quarries, where conditions were notoriously brutal.[3Imperial slaves and freedmen (the familia Caesaris) worked in mine administration and management. In the Late Republic, about half the gladiators who fought in Roman arenas were slaves, though the most skilled were often free volunteers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome
what you are basically saying is that slaves were a parasite class, profoundly ahistorical.
Coyotl
(15,262 posts)
You might want to turn to more academic sources for this kind of discussion.
Octafish
(55,745 posts)Michael Parenti analyzed how the late Republic crashed due to greed and Caesar tried to prevent it through fiscal policies that would benefit the 99-percent.
SidDithers
(44,333 posts)Keep trying, Hannah.
Sid