(The Center Square) – The federal government spent $1.8 trillion more than it collected in tax revenue in fiscal year 2024, according to figures released Friday by U.S. Treasury Department.
In fiscal year 2024, the U.S. government spent nearly $900 billion on interest on the debt alone.
“That’s more than we spent on national defense, Medicare, and children at the federal level – just a truly astounding figure,” MacGuineas said. “The national debt is on track to reach a record share of the economy in just two years, a sobering milestone for both the next Congress and whoever wins the presidency in November.”
That was one of the theories around the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire … towards the end, wealth became so concentrated to just a few wealthy families, empire kept expanding and having to pay for stuff but nothing was left to pay for anything else and every other non-wealthy citizen had to fend for themselves. The machine got to be so top heavy that nothing was left to support it so it just slowly dissolved and crashed.
I wouldn’t worry about it though … just give it a few hundred years and we’ll probably do it all again.
I can’t say that I really buy that. Wealth was always concentrated in Rome. I’m going to assume that you mean the Western Roman Empire because the whole Roman Empire lasted until 1453 although there was a brief time that Crusaders took it over. If it were true, both sides of the empire would have fallen since they both operated the same.
The Empire definitely had quite a few issues. The debasement of the coinage led to some pretty significant inflation. It got so bad that Diocletian basically got rid of the mint and went with a very complex goods conversion system. But that was in the 3rd century. The Western Roman Empire had a hell of a lot more tribes bordering them to contend with while the East largely just had the Sassanids. The rules of succession were pretty lax too and many emperors avoided making successors until their death bed. That is fine if the emperor has a slow and predictable death but when they didn’t, people (often military leaders) would simply claim they were emperor and take their armies and take over. That gave an opening for outside tribes to take advantage of the chaos.
Yes it was … the trouble was that in the early part of the empire, there were many wealthy individuals and a fairly large wealthy middle class citizenry … wealth was concentrated but at least there were many, many wealthy people.
But generally speaking (I’m no historian, I’ve just read lots about it so this is my own interpretation) … as the empire grew, conquered more and stretched itself further, more wealth went to the wealthiest, and the military needed more soldiers, being a soldier meant you had to be citizen but you had to leave your land - leave your land, you made no money, so you sold your land - now you are a full time soldier with no land and your only life is the military - meanwhile your land gets bought for cheap by wealthy land owners - multiply all this for about a hundred years and now you have a few wealthy families with all the land (and all the say in where to fight) and a landless middle class who have no option but the military … the wealthy don’t want to give up control so they free up citizenship to more and more non-Romans … now you have a situation where all of mainland Rome is owned by a few people with all the money (but do no actual fighting), the rest of the people there are either slaves or don’t own anything and the army is becoming filled with people who have never been to mainland Rome and have allegiance to it.
Wealth got concentrated to a very small group of people … and nothing was left to support it … so it collapsed.
We are basically doing the same thing today and the only way we seem to want to sustain it is through perpetual war (which can not be sustained either)
Like I said … I wouldn’t worry about it because we’ll probably repeat it again in a few hundred years … we always have.
Insanity
Sounds like it’s time to elect some Democrats. They always bring the budget in line, and are the only party in a quarter century to run a surplus.
That was one of the theories around the beginning of the end of the Roman Empire … towards the end, wealth became so concentrated to just a few wealthy families, empire kept expanding and having to pay for stuff but nothing was left to pay for anything else and every other non-wealthy citizen had to fend for themselves. The machine got to be so top heavy that nothing was left to support it so it just slowly dissolved and crashed.
I wouldn’t worry about it though … just give it a few hundred years and we’ll probably do it all again.
I can’t say that I really buy that. Wealth was always concentrated in Rome. I’m going to assume that you mean the Western Roman Empire because the whole Roman Empire lasted until 1453 although there was a brief time that Crusaders took it over. If it were true, both sides of the empire would have fallen since they both operated the same.
The Empire definitely had quite a few issues. The debasement of the coinage led to some pretty significant inflation. It got so bad that Diocletian basically got rid of the mint and went with a very complex goods conversion system. But that was in the 3rd century. The Western Roman Empire had a hell of a lot more tribes bordering them to contend with while the East largely just had the Sassanids. The rules of succession were pretty lax too and many emperors avoided making successors until their death bed. That is fine if the emperor has a slow and predictable death but when they didn’t, people (often military leaders) would simply claim they were emperor and take their armies and take over. That gave an opening for outside tribes to take advantage of the chaos.
Yes it was … the trouble was that in the early part of the empire, there were many wealthy individuals and a fairly large wealthy middle class citizenry … wealth was concentrated but at least there were many, many wealthy people.
But generally speaking (I’m no historian, I’ve just read lots about it so this is my own interpretation) … as the empire grew, conquered more and stretched itself further, more wealth went to the wealthiest, and the military needed more soldiers, being a soldier meant you had to be citizen but you had to leave your land - leave your land, you made no money, so you sold your land - now you are a full time soldier with no land and your only life is the military - meanwhile your land gets bought for cheap by wealthy land owners - multiply all this for about a hundred years and now you have a few wealthy families with all the land (and all the say in where to fight) and a landless middle class who have no option but the military … the wealthy don’t want to give up control so they free up citizenship to more and more non-Romans … now you have a situation where all of mainland Rome is owned by a few people with all the money (but do no actual fighting), the rest of the people there are either slaves or don’t own anything and the army is becoming filled with people who have never been to mainland Rome and have allegiance to it.
Wealth got concentrated to a very small group of people … and nothing was left to support it … so it collapsed.
We are basically doing the same thing today and the only way we seem to want to sustain it is through perpetual war (which can not be sustained either)
Like I said … I wouldn’t worry about it because we’ll probably repeat it again in a few hundred years … we always have.
That’s worse than my credit card interest rate.