Also small landholders and artisans in Italy could not compete with large latifundia [1] and manufactures using 'free' slave labour and cheap grain from Egypt and cheap financing (gold from conquests). The Roman conquest had been financed by the state but the spoils benefitted mostly wealthy citizens (tax farming in provinces).
But plebs still had voting rights and every year there were held elections on Mars Fields and keeping the apperances of democracy was important for Roman Republic (also during the what we know as Imperial period). So the giveway of food and coin and entertainment to citizens had became a new norm.[2]
The wikipedia article concludes that the final law "eliminated the political disparity between the two classes" so I am asking(not contradicting you because I don't have the knowledge) if your conclusion is based on something solid or just your own guess? I am not convinced about your agument.
Both sides were relativly wealthy people but birth rights were giving them unequal status.
So not really a conflict between rich and poor. But of course populist side claimed tactical class solidarity with city's poor people. Later on bipartisan system of optimates and populari stayed for years but the division lost its practical meaning.
It's like saying that steam machine and industrial revolution bancrupted landowning class and abolished serfdom in Eastern Europe in XIX century.. It is perhaps true but it is also complex, multidimensional dynamics.
For better or worse, Americans have long identified more with businessmen and less with the working poor than their counterparts in the rest of the West. At least back to the 1920s and the quip about "temporarily embarrassed millionaires".
This consolidation was partially driven by war debts; Roman citizens accrued debts during the wars of conquest, while the generals won the spoils with which they could purchase the land of indebted citizen farmers. It was also driven by economies of scale; the larger estates were more efficient, had lower costs of operation, and had the market contacts to grow the crops that generated the best profit when shipped.
Of course this means Italy basically stopped making food when senators could sell oil at higher margins, and began to depend on Sicily and Egypt to produce the grain for Rome, with the latter eventually becoming the personal property of the emperor. This would cause serious problems later, but the senators profiting neither knew nor cared.
Strikes me that this is about comparative level of development. As long as large inequalities exist then richer countries can feed off the labour of less developed countries. When those countries develop sufficiently they can't be [ab]used in that way.
This is a big issue in UK at the moment as we've kicked out loud of foreign workers, and now have harvest locally produced food, in part because farmers won't pay wages at UK subsistence levels.
Later in the fourth century there were lots of shenanigans around securing the grain supply for the capital which in that period had shifted to north africa. I don't think we can rule out soil degradation as the reason for the shifts in the productive regions across ancient history, like how Paestum turned into a swamp due to soil erosion.
Do you see any chance for revolution in United States? People are too meek, too intimidated and cleverly divided by ruling class in my opinion. And people with mortgage do not do revolutions.
Sometimes this is done intentionally with the strategy of divide and rule [0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_(detective_agency)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Contr...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_worker_deaths_in_Unite...
As for the coal wars, a lot of those altercations weren't exactly result of union workers simply not showing up to work.
I'm not saying you are not right, but it is a too broad generalization to be useful, especially as the imperial expansion phase took more time than the entire history of the US.
good try though, and keep up the good work! correcting strangers' regex is important business.
good try though. keep it up buddy!
I fear that globalization may have served the same function in the United States. The wealthy don’t depend on their poor fellow Americans to provide goods for them and work for them. They depend on good produced oversees and even for domestic production on immigrant labor(look at who gets employed in fame labor or domestic help). They have an alternative to their fellow poor Americans.
Now, a strike in the US has a good chance of resulting not in long term employee benefits like it did before, but in the plant being moved oversees.
Unfortunately, this has bad consequences. When the relatively peaceful secession was no longer an option, Rome devolved into outright violence in the Roman Revolutions which saw demagogues and authoritarians mobilize the disaffected poor to kill their enemies and establish their power. When it all ended with the ascension of Augustus in AD 31, Rome was a republic in name only, but in reality a military dictatorship. And the people were generally happy with it because it brought peace after decades of violence and bloodshed.
I hope our democracies can find a better solution to the issues of wealth inequality, before this story happens to us too.