During the time of Ancient Rome’s fall there has been an increase is tax and inflation which made it harder for the poor/plebeians to live there. The rich/patricians were able to avoid the large tax by moving to the countryside as the tax and inflation was still growing fast for the plebians. As this goes on, the patricians refuse to help or invest in the smaller businesses so no new businesses happen and so they don’t have enough money to pay for what’s needed and then it eventually lead to a huge crash. While america isn’t in an economic crash, there are wealthy american that do use these tactics just to make their lives easier.

First, the rich moving to away to avoid tax in america isn’t unheard of and about 12,000 millionaires do change their state each year just to avoid their tax. For example, if  a state increases its top tax rates by 10 percent, studies have shown that this leads to a one percent decline in that state’s millionaires. Also, some studies on this topic have been keeping a close eyes on two states with a large tax rate like New York and Illinois and two states with no personal income tax like Texas and Florida to look at the migration patterns for millionaires and see anything interesting. The study have found that the states with the large tax rate (New York and Illinois) do have a net out-migration of millionaires and Texas having a net in-migration of millionaires. Surprisingly for Florida, all of the three states that been listed has had an incredibly large quantity millionaires that have migrated to Florida.

Secondly, the rich refusing to help the poor in america is something that has been and still discussed among many. There are many people in the world who strongly believe that the rich just generally don’t care about poor and only care about stastaning their wealth in society. They think the reasons is because they think the rich don’t want to be bothered, they feel overwhelmed by choices, they don’t want to be hassled, and they are to nervous about going broke. While some of these claims could be valid arguments in their own right, it still doesn’t talk about how not helping the poor hurts america and how that helped rome to eventually fall.

The rich not caring about the struggling poor is not just morally wrong, but hurts the country as a whole and lowers the wealth of the its government. Comparing the fall of rome’s from its economic problems to another economic catastrophe, The Great Depression. During that time, to help get america out of the slump they thought that if people had money or jobs, then they could use that money to pay for goods and get the economy flowing again. While rome’s unemployment rate isn’t the topic of discussion at the moment, but it definitely would been beneficial for the country if the rich patricians started to share their money at the time with the poor plebians. America isn’t in a huge economical  problem anymore, but wealthy individuals could still give support though donations for communities living in poverty to give them a sustainable life do they can help the economy. But also because it’s the right thing to do, to give the people who work harder the us just to live the choice to have an easier life.

And lastly, the comparison of america and the country of rome’s distribution of income of the rich higher class group of people instead of split evenly among them and the poor. Although it’s practically impossible on being able to find an exact distribution of the income for ancient rome, many schools and researchers have found a good estimate on what they believed the distribution was at the time. And the studies have show that the top one percent of roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth. While that already may seem high for just a one percent of its society it’s only about half of what america today’s one percent control with a 38 percent in wealth., you could even say that rome’s income distribution was even more fair than america today.

In conclusion, the fact that the rich roman did nothing to help with many problem caused by them and didn’t think to support their country in a time of need is strangely similar to present day american economical issues. From the rich moving to avoid an increase in tax, the rich not caring enough about the poor lower class, and to the large difference of the unfair distribution of the income are all traits that wealthy americans either have done or how it affects everyone else. Now this agreement does not apply to all wealthy individuals let alone the majority, but it does apply to more than I speculated before going into the research and hopes that at least on of these issues gets better during my lifetime.

Work Cited

Zaremba, Cheyenne. “Reflections Of Rome: Economic Similarities Between USA Wealth Distribution And The Fall Of The Roman Empire.” The Odyssey Online, Roberts Wesleyan College, 8 Aug. 2016, www.theodysseyonline.com/reflections-of-rome.

Stern, Ken. “Why the Rich Don’t Give to Charity.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 26 Jan. 2018, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/04/why-the-rich-dont-give/309254/.

CityLab, Richard Florida, and Richard Florida University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute. “Do Taxes Really Cause the Rich to Move?” CityLab, University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, 29 June 2016,www.citylab.com/equity/2016/06/do-taxes-really-cause-the-rich-to-move/487835/.