parallells between U..S. & Rome

sounds bullish for real estate!

That is an excellent analysis, Riversider, something that I think is befitting of you and the Rand Paul / Ron Paul / Ayn Rand set of deep economic thinkers. You're right: our pipes are made of lead. You're right: we fight with swords and shields. You're right: it takes months to travel by jackass from the capital to the outer edges of the empire. You're right: we worship the sun. You're right: we have a numbering system that doesn't include 0.

You're right: NOTHING has changed in the last 2,000 years, such as our understanding of how economics works.

Which is, of course, the problem with your economic theories, as I've often said: they work mighty well in a backwards agricultural economy, but not at all in a sophisticated modern urban economy where money can move with the click of a button.

Too bad gold and silver weigh so much.

This kind of analysis can't be taken too seriously, but it is something interesting to ponder. Yes, we've learned a few things, forgotten a bunch other things and nobody ever agrees on what we learned..
I'm reminded that history may not repeat, but it sure rhymes.

There are many differences between the U.S. & Rome, but the similarities are worth talking about. Heavy and unfair tax burdens and political corruption are very much a modern problem, 2000 years of history has not made them go away. Something to chew on..

if nothing else, every great empire eventually has its downfall. Whether our time is now or 100 or 200 years from now, remains to be seen. But that time will come. History always repeats itself.

The comment by steve above is one my favorites that I have ever seen him post. He can be a cranky guy but he does come up with witty stuff sometimes.

Lol @ ar...

Rs this is something even an abstract thinker like myself would prefer not to chew on, just a waste of good chewing energy. I will chew on the fact that like Rome and the dinosaurs our destiny will be what it will be. Perhaps a comparison to England or maybe Portugal would be more apt...greatness and world dominance will dwindle into a 3rd rate "first" world nation as China rises to dominance.

A screenplay anyone?

Keith, America's greatness does not have to diminish, but if we keep moving toward socialism, it will be inevitable.

In a socialist country, citizens pay high taxes and in return receive a lot of social assistance (look at Scandinavia). We pay high taxes and receive nothing!!! We are far far from a socialist country. The amount of money that is wasted in this country is astounding. And the only thing people want to argue about is which jackass, bush or obama, was better at spending it. We are in trouble!!

I know, LICC: Socialism is what killed Rome, and the British Empire, right?

Overly burdensome taxes on the productive members of society, and excessive government central planning and control over people's lives - call it whatever you want.

"Overly burdensome taxes on the productive members of society"

Then if your taxes are so "overly burdensome," why don't you move to Wyoming?

"and excessive government central planning"

Can you please give me the email of the Politburo, so I can give them a piece of your mind? Small piece - I don't want to waste what little there is.

"control over people's lives"

Ah, yes: TERRY SCHIAVO!

Call it whatever you want.

hahaha i forgot about Terry Schiavo. But that was ok. It was morally the right thing to do. Just like starting wars.

And parallel don't got that many l's, Riversider.

You think you're so "overly taxed" in New York, LICC, go here:

http://www.bcpa.net/TaxCalc.asp

and see how much property tax you'd pay in Broward County Florida. Add hurricane insurance to that and the NEED to have a car, and you'll see that for most people it's actually cheaper to live in New York City, especially if you a) rent, or b) own a single-family home.

Not sure what the property tax burden was in ancient Rome, but I understand that Nero was in general a scofflaw.

From the WSJ:

In one corner of the world you have Europe, beset by a sovereign debt crisis that's been building for 50 years. The U.K.'s new prime minister, David Cameron, promises his people years of austerity to dig out from beneath their debt. Americans, staring at fiscal crevasses opening across Europe, have to decide if they also wish to spend the next 50 years laboring mainly to produce tax revenue to pay for public workers' pensions and other public promises. The private sector would exist for the public sector.

In another corner of the world, wealth is rising from the emerging economies of the east—China, India, Korea and the rest—posing America's greatest economic challenge in anyone's lifetime. Do the American people want to throw in the towel, or do they want to compete? If the latter, the public sector has to give way to the private sector.

One or the other. It's time to choose.

It was interesting to read that in Rome the citizens received free grain.

You're right: it's time to choose:

Clinton:

1998 Surplus $92 billion
1999 Surplus $165 billion
2000 Surplus $302 billion
2001 Surplus $160 billion

Bush:

2002 Deficit $194 billion
2003 Deficit $452 billion
2004 Deficit $480 billion
2005 Deficit $357 billion
2006 Deficit $269 billion
2007 Deficit $170 billion
2008 Deficit $467 billion

"Much of the costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not been funded through regular appropriations bills, but through emergency supplemental appropriations bills. As such, most of these expenses were not included in the budget deficit calculation prior to FY2010."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget#Budgetary_treatment_of_Iraq_.26_Afghanistan_war_expenses

More Republican budgetary legerdemain. Bush's deficits were even higher - Republicans like to go off on how much bigger today's budget deficit is, but the truth is merely that now everything gets counted.

VOTE BLUE!

And circus ... that was what did them in, the libertarian circus

Panem et Circenses

It was Juvenal that coined this system, a mechanism of influential power over the Roman mass. "Panem et Circensus", literally "bread and circuses", was the formula for the well-being of the population, and thus a political strategy. This formula offered a variety of pleasures such as: the distribution of food, public baths, gladiators, exotic animals, chariot races, sports competition, and theater representation. It was an efficient instrument in the hands of the Emperors to keep the population peaceful, and at the same time giving them the opportunity to voice themselves in these places of performance

After boring us to death with pointless and irrelevant economic factoids, RS moves on to abusing our corpses with pointless and irrelevant Poli Sci mash.

How about, "Deficiti non matterum"?

- Cheyneyon I

And you should at least quote your plagiarism, RS, so people understand better how you don't know what you're talking about:

http://www.capitolium.org/eng/imperatori/circenses.htm

Olenstay, as we might asay inay igpay atinlay.

Why Did Rome Fall—And Why Does It Matter Now?
http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson021410.html

"Rather than rehash Gibbon, or review the spate of recent books on Rome’s decline and our own supposed end, I throw out a few general notions......

What made American culture boom through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were traditional American values like the Protestant work ethic, family thrift, limited and stable government, equality of opportunity rather than result, lower taxes, personal freedom, opportunity for advancement and profit, and faith in American exceptionalism.

But the cloning and spreading of this system after WWII (“globalization”) did two things: literally billions of non-Westerners adopted the Western mode of production and began, in economic terms, becoming far more productive in creating valuable manufacturing goods, food, and exporting previously unknown or untapped natural resources; in addition, the vast rise in population added billions to the world’s productive work force.

Two, this influx of imported goods and inclusion of hundreds of millions into the American orbit enriched the United States in unimaginable ways.....
****
Today, the “poor” as I see them daily at Wal-Mart and Food-4-Less in Selma (a poor town in a poor county in poor central California) buy blue-ray DVD players, have to buy food-stamp subsidized sirloin rather than rib-eye (as I can attest watching 5 carts ahead of me in line tonight), and drive used 2000 Tahoes and 2001 Yukons rather 2010 Honda Accords. Government subsidies for housing, food, transportation, etc., coupled with cheap Chinese and Indian imported consumer goods, have for a time been substituted for the old manufacturing jobs or resource-based work (e.g., we don’t make steel, we increasingly curtail farming, we don’t drill, etc.). In other words, we are enjoying a lifestyle undreamed of by our grandparents who had values quite different from our own — a result of globalization, advances in technology, and massive borrowing and debt.
****
But as in the case of Rome, there is a price for all these sudden riches. Just as the Iberians, and Libyans, and Thracians were hungrier and more enterprising than Italians back in the bay of Naples, so too we, the beneficiaries of this wealth, lost the values that were at its heart, in a way that the Indians, Chinese, and others have not — yet."

The radical-right is so silly, or maybe it's just too many sidecars. (I was once served Harvey Wallbanger Cake -- no, that's not a typo -- at a Republican gathering, not incidentally.)

Rome's fall occurred for the same reason all empire's falls have: excessive military expansion (and its cost as a percentage of production, and the corrupt flows of money thereby) across expansive lands. The most recent example of that is the Soviet Empire, not the British Empire.

If the United States Empire falls, it will be because we're well along that path. The bread, the circuses, not so much.

Actually RIversider, the wealthy in Rome paid LESS and LESS taxes as time went on, as more and more became "priests" and "bishops" and were thus exempt from taxation, as they transferred their welath to their parrishes...this was when you could still inherit bishopdoms and they could marry. Which left the POOREST paying more than their "fair share" of a dwindling tax base...as all of this was accompanied by no economic growth. So it is a parallel, but in 180 degrees opposite how you mean it.

Oh and speaking of the Catholic Church, Rome spent so much blood and energy persecuting heretics and heathens that it greatly weakened there abilty to fight outside wars...and those wealthy bishops were exempt from military service, meaning that the army was increasingly made up of foriegners and the poor, rather than the wealthy and educated classes...

With the right leadership, it would not be hard to bring back the principles that have made America great- individual responsibility, equal opportunity, limited government, freedom, justice. Enough with entitlements, handouts, social engineering, and intrusive government.

jason10006, perhaps you have the right locus but the wrong annum?

LICC, when did that ever really happen? Little House in the Prairie fantasies do NOT count, by the way.
Come on, give us a year, that golden age of equal opportunity for all.

Actually it was just one day, in his youth. But he recalls it fondly.

You guys! I can't believe you're making fun of LICC's vision of the world!

Here's a multiple-choice question. Who invented "the principles that have made America great"?

a) Ponce de Leon
b) Finian (of "Rainbow" fame)
c) Utopia Parkway
d) Scrooge McDuck
e) Mr. Smith (of "Goes to Washington" fame)

Hint: this is a trick question. Utopia Parkway is not a person.

It was Mr. Weatherbee.

@steve answer: Al Gore of course, who don't know dat?

No, Keith, Al Gore invented the Internet, which George II rechristened "The Internets."

Try again. I can't believe you didn't get it with that huge hint I gave.

lol.

http://www.wildmanstevebrill.com/JPEG%27S/Clipart/Weatherbee.gif

oooh, ooh, alan said "annum"

Adam Smith....

"Wealth of Nations".

So long, Holly:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDplfsZxrbg&feature=related

columbiacounty ,you seem upset. Is it because aboutready wished us farewell? Conveniently timed the morning she was going on vacation?

She'll be back. She wished streeteasy farewell two years ago. Jsmith posted the link to her farewell, didn't you see it?