Is this the future of America? Terry Jones discusses the income gap in Imperial Rome

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Monty Python alumnus Terry Jones presents ancient history painlessly as he discusses the gap between rich and poor in first century Rome. It sounds like today's Wall Street Journal.

...and as fond of Rome as I am -- it pays my mortgage -- there's no meaningful comparison of economies to be made. A pre-capitalist economy with 90% of its population, and a third of that unfree, engaged in subsistence agriculture is different in both degree and kind from the US or any other advanced country today.

Take it all cum granō salis maiore.

that the comparison is the wealth gap not the way the wealth gap evolved.

Because Terry Jones makes history so much fun.

both resulted in wealth and income distributions like the present and resulted in financial meltdowns and rebirth of the nation.

What is different now is that other Nations are more advanced, our resource frontier domestically no longer exists, and there is a political tension between the interests of the population and the elite without precedent in our Nation, largely because of inequal and lack of acknowledgement of the law of the land. Obama himself is guilty. Our leaders regardless of party chose bullying and violence over mutual self-interest and 90% of Americans now pay the price.

There should be a field of political / social ecology. Dogma since 30 years ago is trickle down economics which is an ecological fraud unless one is centered on short-tewm self interest or dogma. There is a mostly ignored field of ecologic economics.

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