A Willingness to Commit National Suicide...

[elfs]

Worth considering:

The willingness of the rich to defend their wealth from taxation to the point of national ruin is nothing new in world history ...

The Han dynasty in China fell in the third century AD after aristocratic families with government connections became increasingly able to shield their ever-larger land holdings from taxation, which helped precipitate the bloody Yellow Turban peasant revolt. Nearly a millennium and a half later, the great Ming dynasty went into protracted decline in part for similar reasons: unable or unwilling to raise taxes on the landed gentry, the government couldn't pay its soldiers and was overrun by Manchu invaders.

The Hungarian King Matthias Corvinus persuaded his reluctant nobles to accept higher taxes, with which he built a professional military that beat back the invading Ottomans. But after his death the resentful barons placed a weak foreign prince on the throne and got their taxes cut 70 to 80 percent. When their undisciplined army lost to Suleiman the Magnificent, Hungary lost its independence.

So, the next time some fool tells you that the wealthy control the Republican Party and would never let it default on the good faith and full credit of the United States of America, remember oh yes they would, because each of them believes that his wealth can be shielded from the consequences. And in a world of mobile money, he's probably right.

Comments

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

thanks much for so succinctly phrasing something I've been trying to explain to people for *ages* next time I need to do so would you mind if I linked them to your LJ?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Feel free.

[oldhans117.livejournal.com]

In Terry Jones' Barbarians there was a great chapter on the fall of Rome. The entire tax burden was moved onto the common citizens and the rich not only stopped paying anything, they seized all the farmland and turned the workers into (and there are a word for it but I can not remember it) slaves who still have to pay taxes. The end result was when Attila the Hun or whoever came over the hill to burn and pillage the people said go ahead I have no stake in anything. Yup it was tax policy that caused the ruin of Rome not sex.

Great book the TV show is a hoot as well.

[amindofiron.livejournal.com]

those large estates where called latifundium. In addition to causing the problem you mentioned they where also at least partially responsible for the great "mobs of Rome" that formed from the masses of peasant farmers they displaced.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

Terry Jones' "Medieval Lives" was the inspiration for my "violating the social contract" paragraph in my comment below.

He reveals that the "$h1t-wallowing serfs" were anything but. There was a social contract between the Baron and those living under him. Some of the serfs served as his administrators, keeping the books or managing the other serfs. Because the aristocracy, y'see, was busy either (A) off fighting wars; (B) defending their lands from wars; or (C) training for war. The Barons had their own social contract, obligations to their feudal lords, in a chain of fealty that stopped at the King.

And the social contract went both directions. Those above had to serve those below. The Barons collected a percentage of the grain farmed, it's true. However, the local Baron was socially-obligated to throw a huge party every year, a big feast for all of his people. Plus, he was obligated through custom and convention to keep extra grain in the storehouses and distribute said surplus in the event of drought or crop failure.


When the social contract broke down, the serfs found themselves with more freedom, but also complete responsibility for themselves. They sank or swam alone, no feudal lord to step in and help.

The episode concludes with Mr. Jones asking, "So why do we have this impression that the medieval peasants were dung-covered?" It comes down to those great history-revisionists, the Victorian British. The merchant class and industrialists were quite keen to convince everyone else, "You think you have it bad? HA! They had it much worse back when..." And, of course, the posh-classes were desperate to convince themselves that the Industrial Era nightmare that they'd created wasn't as bad as it really was.

[grum]

Well Foo. Thanks for this link, it helps explain some of my unease and I dearly hope that this can be averted. ETA: Not averted, I'm not (quite) that pessimistic. That the wealthy can be convinced that they are infact in the same boat they may well be shortsightedly trying to sink.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

…but as my father has said, "…they may think that they're above the country, but they're in for a Very Rude Awakening when they bring the country falling down around their ears."

Money may be mobile, but culture is not. Rich Americans will not be feeling terribly welcome in European nations (and definitely not from the elites of Europe, who'll be damned if they'll let their countries be financially sacked by American barbarians).
And if rich Americans think they'll be fine in "small gubbmint paradises" &mdash think again. They'll find themselves spending copious $$$ on private security, private electric generators, private water supply and generally living under armed guard everyplace they go. (Think Brasil before Lula, where kidnapping the rich was one of the major industries.)

Throughout history, whenever the Rich and/or Powerful broke their social contract with &hellip well, everyone else, things went downhill for everyone.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

The problem is with your analysis is obvious: the culture of the rich is cosmopolitan. When we're talking about "the rich" in this context, we're discussing the one-percenters, the people who are worth $20 million or more, the ones who own senators and congressmen. These are people who lead a life where a polo game in Milan, a nightclub in Moscow, and an opera in Sydney are all theirs for the taking, and they like it that way.

If you think they care about one country's sovereign debt, even their "official" country of citizenship (which, for most, means as much to them as Rupert Murdoch's did to him), you're sadly mistaken.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

I have to disagree. Saying, "The culture of the rich is cosmopolitan," has very strong undertones of, "Everybody is American."

I've noticed that almost all people in the US make this assumption, that the rest of the world, "Is Exactly Like Us," attributing US cultural traits to human nature. Even many people who've been out of the country will retain this assumption. I did, until 2/3 of the way through my junior semester in Mainz, Germany, when those differences smacked me (and 3 fellow American students, and one of the professors at the Uni-Mainz) right upside the head. Even a culture that's closely related to the US — Germany (note: German immigrants comprised a substantial percent of the US population throughout the first 100 years of this country's existence, and even for some time before then) — still has some striking differences.

So, no. Even "cosmopolitan" people still have a base-layer of their native culture. And culture is a very strong force. (Humans are social creatures, after all.) I'll give you two examples.
First, I'm part Italian-American, and my family is still very large, yet enmeshed. Despite late-20^th-century life, we still retain this rather-Italian cultural trait of considering extended family no more distant than siblings. Every relative knows, and wants to know, all of the details of everyone else's lives. A "small" get-together is 15-20 people. And this is only just now beginning to fade, only after 4 generations of Americanization.
Second, have you ever watched how your African-American friends gesticulate? I mean the subtle hand-gestures that we make every day but don't pay attention to. They're different; African-Americans use their hands in a subtly-different way from Euro-Americans. But, not different from the way a Kenyan or a Nigerian does. Even after the centuries of slavery, of complete obliteration of the original native cultures, some things still remained (in this case, the subtle hand movements).

Culture is a very strong force, and not easy to get rid of. Not even a world-traveller will completely get rid of the culture of the land of their birth.

So, unless The "Cosmopolitan" Rich live completely bunkered lives, isolated in walled-off compounds in every country they go to, interacting with only others exactly like them (i.e. from their own country), they will not feel "at home" in different countries. And living a bunkered existence ain't exactly fun.

You mention Rupert Murdoch. I would argue that he's still quite culturally-Australian. We in the US & Canada don't notice it, since Aussies, like us, have a culture based on colonizing a very large, spread-out land area, with a British-culture substrate. However, there are differences even there. We in the US still associate a British accent with either snobbery or villainy (or both). Australians, however … I recall watching a documentary that discussed the attitudes of Aussies towards things British. Because of its start as a penal colony, Australians, it seems, associate a British accent with all things Good. Sophisticated. Educated. They'd consider their own accent as … well, ghetto, not-as-good-as. This only started changing during the past 40-60 years (IIRC from the documentary).
So, a lot of Rupert Murdoch's behavior starts to look very different once one considers these cultural aspects.

And, no, Elf, I don't believe that the wealthy from the US care at all about the debt of this country (much less any other). However, if you think that rich Americans, after wrecking this country, will be able to just pick up and move on to another one, think again. I rather doubt that the locals will be happy to see this incoming plague of American-locusts who ruined their own country. You see, once the US is wrecked, the rest of the world no longer has any reason whatsoever to ingratiate themselves to even wealthy Americans. Humor them to get them to spend their money, sure. But allow them influence in a country that isn't theirs? No.