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Politics : THE WHITE HOUSE -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: goldworldnet who wrote (10093)	10/31/2007 11:19:55 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

If you say so, Goldie..... (All I know is that EVERYTHING changes.)

To: goldworldnet who wrote (10093)	10/31/2007 11:28:53 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25737

Excerpt from Will Durant's 'The Story of Civilization, Caesar & Christ': "Political anarchy accelerated economic disintegration, and economic decline promoted political decay; each was a cause and effect of the other - Farmers complained their high taxes consumer their precarious profits and left them too little to keep the drainage and irrigation canals in repair - Large tracts of fertile land had been withdrawn from cultivation for residential estates - Many peasant proprietors and free rural workers abandoned the farms for the cities - The class struggle was becoming more violent - The export trade of Italy fell - Depreciated currencies and uncertain prices discouraged long term enterprises - Italy grew poorer while the rising wealth of Asia Minor forced the replacement of Rome with an Eastern Capital - Italian industry was thrown back upon its domestic market and found the people too poor to buy the goods they could make - Internal commerce was hampered by rising taxes and the deterioration of the roads - The emperors repeatedly debased the currency to pay for state expenses and military supplies - Inflation ruined a large part of the middle class, rendered all business discouragingly precarious and destroyed a considerable portion of the trading and investment capital, upon which the economic life of the Empire depended - Labor was frozen to its jobs - When any man wished to leave, the state reminded him that Italy was in a state of siege - Flight from taxes became almost epidemic - Severe penalties were enacted for evasion- villages and towns were abandoned because of high assessments. "At last in the fourth century citizens fled over the border to seek refuge among the barbarians." Durant also points out the importance of how the rise of mercenary armies destroyed the independence of Italy long before its fall....