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Political Issues, Social Issues

A Wall Can Cause America to Crumble like Rome

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December 22nd, 2018, America witnessed its longest government shutdown in history.  For 35 days, 9 federal departments went without pay; leaving 800,000 workers without income.

 

The result of this seemingly never ending nightmare was the quarrel over the funding of our President’s wall on the southern border of Mexico.  Our President’s desire for his wall pushed him into shutting down our government to receive the funding for his partition on our southern border.

 

The Parties’ Points of View

 

Our President thinks that if we can block out Mexico then most of the country’s problems can be fixed.  But the reality is that the majority of the crimes committed in the country aren’t done by immigrants, but native born US citizens.

 

Most of the republicans side with President Trump on these matters, but not all. They are willing to side with the President because they see it as the most fit way to get what they want.

 

Democrats on the other hand, rather use the money for more appropriate matters.  Democrats actually supported giving money to border security, but not funding for the wall.

 

The Effects On Our Own Citizens

 

The standstill in congress between the Democrats and Republicans to pass an appropriate spending bill for President Trump’s wall caused our government shutdown, and left over 800,000 employees unpaid.

 

Most government workers were still going into work so that when they got paid after the shutdown ended, they would have a paycheck to take home to their families.

 

While the government has shutdown three times during Trump’s presidency, this has been the most catastrophic shut down in his presidency, and the history of the United States.

 

Just like Rome…

 

A major disagreement like this one is a telltale sign of failure.  Sooner or later our country will split more than it already is, for a second time.  Past empires, governments, and civilizations have failed because of major disputes between itself, and as history continues to repeat, we are on the path to failure.  

 

A famous empire that fell due to a civil war between government bodies is Rome.  Ancient Rome may not seem like it is similar to the United State, but in present time, it is.  The United States have followed the wrong footsteps into Rome’s slow descent into nothingness. With our government shutting down, and the never ending dispute between Republicans and Democrats, America is looking quite similar to Rome.

 

Rome’s government split over time, and when the non-stop fighting between the two government bodies piled on year after year, 300 agonizingly slow years later Rome fell.  300 years, the United States have barely been a country for that long, but is still experiencing the same amount of disagreement between our government.

 

There is no telling how it may play out, but if the United States continues to argue and disagree between our government, we may end up like Ancient Rome in a hundred, or less, years.  And if it’s all over a wall, I’m sure history would be disappointed.

 

Social Issues

RICH VS. POOR (Is America the next rome?) By Tamanna Shaikh

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I am sure you have heard the news…

Every time you turn on the TV, you hear something horrific that is going in the US.

While I personally try not pay attention the negative news, I found myself wondering what was real and what wasn’t. Where there’s smoke there is fire.

As I started looking into some of the different American issues I realized we had a unique resemblance to Rome in many ways.

Specifically, the wage in America. Is america the next rome?
The Wage Gap in America is similar to Rome.
The wealth gaps between upper-income families and lower-income families have increased 40 percent higher than have ever been recorded for 30 years. According to some historians, the Roman society controlled 16 percent of the wealth. Which is less than half of America’s percent control. The wealth of white households is ten times the wealth of non-white households. Rome has tried numerous times to fix the crisis between the Patricians and Plebeians, but the increase of slavery, unemployed,inflation, and corrupt and greedy government officials and patricians (who desire wealth and power other than civic duties) have made these problems irreversible and would continue on until Rome’s fall in 476 C.E. Most of hispanic and black students need a lot of financial help to afford college and other things. In 2016 however, it has been reported that 42% of black families have more student loan debt than white families. Rome may have subtitute money to the plebians to buy goods such as wheat, but Rome cannot lower education costs the plebeians needed, making them uneducated.

Three facts to consider:
-The gap between the rich and poor have increased for years
-The wage gap based on different ethical and social classes (For America: whites and non-whites. For Romans: Patricians and Plebeians.)
-The strategies to help and provide benefits to poor doesn’t always seems to work

The life of richness shelters dark reality
If you’re wealthy in America, then you have give up your relationships, future, and passions and making your wealth your entire life. Roman emperors spend huge sums of money on parties, festivals, and for their personal gain. They only cared about having money and power rather than doing civic duties. A huge empire with tremendous wealth can slowly fall due to bad leadership. This causes invaders to easily attack the empire and people with little money can due to starvation and disease. If you buy nice things, people perceive you as being materialistic or “show off” regardless if it’s true or not. The plebeians at one time, revolted against the patricians due to the fact the patricians make unfair laws that the plebeians doesn’t even know about. During the Roman empire, the plebeians suffer poverty and poor health conditions while the plebeians waste their lives spending money and partying. In both America and Rome, the population of common and poor people greater than wealthy people and aristocrats.

Three facts to consider
-Having tremendous wealth makes you forget who you are.
-The views of wealthy people are negative.
-More common people and less wealthy people.

Poverty in two worlds
In both America and Rome, people continuously buying goods and increasing prices can cause people to be impoverished. In fact, inflation is one of the main contributions to the fall of Rome. As of 2015, millions of americans have lived in poverty although at different times in history. That pretty much how common people in Ancient Rome have live for thousands of years. Decreased trade, worthless money, and tension between neighboring nations may cause a lot of people to be impoverished.
Three facts to consider
-Inflation=poverty.
-The number of people and years of being impoverished have increased.
-The contributions leading to poverty.

Lazy/apathetic aristocrats
You probably already know celebrities and politicians in America who are millionaires or billionaires for many different things. However, some people who aren’t rich believe wealthy people are lazy. If people earn tremendous amounts of money, they might spend the rest of their lives drinking, partying, and socializing rather than going to work or run the government. That’s exactly how Roman emperors spend their leisure times after creating a huge and wealthy empire and then they don’t care about their jobs anymore. Sometimes, having good amounts of money will make you head of the government. But people shouldn’t be leaders who are conceited and only caring about their wealth. Leaders should be caring, kind, and generous to his people no matter the social class.

Three facts to consider
-Are wealthy people really workaholic?
-Lavish lifestyles after becoming rich.
-Money doesn’t always make you powerful.

In my conclusion, America is the next Rome.

Work cited:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/5-charts-explain-why-some-american-families-are-getting-far-richer-than-others-2017-10-05https://www.businessinsider.com/downsides-of-getting-rich-2014-6https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_Stateshttps://www.huffingtonpost.com/anthony-w-orlando/the-rich-arent-rich-becau_b_4791626.htmlhttps://persquaremile.com/2011/12/16/income-inequality-in-the-roman-empire/https://www.brainpop.com/socialstudies/worldhistory/falloftheromanempire/

Social Issues

Fall of Rome

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The Roman Empire Was Just Too Big

Ancient Rome.” Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 10 Jul. 2017. school.eb.com/levels/high/article/ancient-Rome/106272 

 

Tschen-Emmons, James B. “Roman Empire.” World History: Ancient and Medieval Eras, ABC-CLIO, 2018, ancienthistory.abc-clio.com/Search/Display/588528. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018. 

 

Roman Empire.” Gale Encyclopedia of World History: Governments, vol. 1, Gale, 2008. World History in Context, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3048600025/WHIC?u=va_s_053_0900&xid=e8f1d307. Accessed 20 Mar. 2018. 

 

Rome spread quickly and that caused Rome to be too hard to govern 

United states  

In the united states of America there is over 7 billion people it can be just as hard as roman to govern the united states of America  

The other part of Rome that makes it too hard to govern is that there is only one king to watch over everything 

 

The King also had to watch over all the soldiers to make sure they wouldn’t cause any trouble they also had to make sure no one was invading them and that they must care for all these citizens makes it even harder for their Job. 

In the United states of America there are so many factories to feed people and the fact that the president and government must make sure they know when attack is coming and where it would take place, so it is just as hard to Watch over everything as it is to Rome. 

The Government of Rome was Very busy because there where different leaders of Rome that had different opinions on Rome and that also made the Roman Empire very hard to Govern all the time. 

In the united states it is a very similar story the President and the branches of Government have different opinions as well so that makes the United States of America hard to Govern just as much as Rome.  

Rome also had multiple Invasion’s, so it is very hard to watch over all of Rome so that made it hard for Rome to Govern all that land in a certain amount of time That also is a reason Rome was too hard to Govern. 

The United States was also very hard to Govern Everyone must keep their eye out to make sure they know if an attack is coming soon So it was hard to govern the united states just as much as Rome.  

Rome was too hard to govern because everyone in Rome could Protest against the Rome’s government this was another reason why Rome was hard to govern. 

The United states can have a pretty similar situation they also have to deal with the people Protest against the government especially the President of the United states of, America So the United states can have pretty similar situation. 

It was too hard to govern and not everyone was loyal to Rome and different people made their own group so not everyone was loyal to Rome. 

The United states have a similar issue they must deal with people that betray them and make their own group and they attack innocent people and kill soldiers and that created many problems with the United States, so Rome and The United States of America had similar situation. 

The population of Rome was so big too govern so it caused many problems with Rome and that caused Rome to slowly fall because it was so hard to govern all those people. 

The United States of America had a similar Situation there was over 7.6 billion people in the United States, so it was hard for the Government and everyone else to watch over the United States of America. 

Rome also had to deal with their own people fighting each other so they had many issues with people fighting their own kind. 

The United States of America also had a similar problem they must deal with people fighting their own kind and had to deal with a lot of fights and it puts a lot of innocent people in danger, so Rome and the United States of America had to deal with similar situation. 

Rome had to deal with many enemies, so they had to always guard Rome, so it was hard for Rome to govern all their land. 

The United States of America had to deal with the same thing they must deal with a lot of enemies to, so they always must be on the lookout for enemies at most of the time, so Rome and the United States of America are similar when it comes to Enemies. 

Rome also didn’t have very great kings for a while, so Rome had to deal with a lot of issues like invasion, infatuation, and Civil wars. 

The United States of America had a pretty similar issues there where some presidents that don’t do much for the government so that lead to some downfalls of the United States so Rome and The United States of America and a pretty similar situation. 

 

 

 

 

 

Social Issues

Is America The New Rome…??

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…Fated to fail

From the start, Rome was destined to absolute monumental failure.  It started out small like every other empire but there came a point where Rome became too big… I mean it was enormous. I’m guessing that they ignorantly did not realize that they weren’t going to be responsible enough of their empire for it to continue thriving as it had been during the Pax Romana (a time period of about 200 years where Rome was at its best.)

Too much and too fast…

Because of this, the Roman government was weakening continuously while the population of the Roman Empire was growing rapidly and becoming tremendously immense.  All of this meant that the government could not control the rapidly growing empire…at all. The Romans thought that they would always be the best, but just like the Chinese dynasties, their greatness was fated to end. Someone once said, “All good things must come to an end.” The people of the Roman Empire were probably way too confident in their government, but who could blame them; they were the biggest empire at the time.  Although they tried their best, laziness probably got to the Romans; even as they saw their empire coming to an end and becoming corrupt, they couldn’t have cared less.

 

… Don’t bite off more than you can chew

Why did Rome grow so amazingly big in the first place? The Roman Empire grew simply because they were remarkably greedy. The Romans had a good sized empire already, but that just wasn’t enough for them. Their goal was to grow, grow and grow.  I wonder what they were thinking to do when it got extremely large. Did they even have a better form of government for when the empire got way too big for the government system at that time? Regardless, they took over a lot of places including today’s Britain, France, Germany, Egypt, Spain, Austria, Switzerland, and many more. Not only were they growing with greed, but they were also making citizens upset. There was no way possible they could’ve controlled that many angry and disappointed people while keeping their empire thriving and large.   Greed is a good thing to a certain point: think about it, if they hadn’t been greedy, their empire wouldn’t have expanded and become extremely successful and powerful. Having a huge empire increased their power over trade and it also made other empires afraid of them, which, in a certain way was a good thing. If other empires or countries were scared of being taken over by them, they would cooperate with anything the Romans asked of them. But…. in the end, their greed did not benefit them: they became too greedy and had too much power, so much that they couldn’t handle the responsibilities that came with all of that power.  With great power comes responsibility; they obviously did NOT take this concept into consideration when taking over so many places. Hopefully other countries can learn from their mistakes and from their successes.

 

…….Is America becoming Rome??

How is modern America and the Ancient Roman Empire related ?

Some similarities would include that America is a representative democracy(which is a form of a republic) the same way the Roman Empire was also a republic. Also, the Ancient Roman Empire was very powerful around the world, just like America.  Not only were they both powerful, but they were also very large. In the same way the Roman Empire fell because it was too large to function, America could also eventually do the same thing, because America is absolutely huge.  Obviously, America’s government is stronger than Rome’s was, but that could change at any given moment.  Either way,  I personally think that America is not looking to expand further in the near future, so if it were so fall because of its size,  it would happen in years to come; that type of failing won’t happen in the blink of an eye.  

How is modern America and the Ancient Roman Empire different ?

The difference between the amount of rights that Americans have and the amount of rights that people in the Roman Empire had is enormous. This a very good thing for Americans because we get huge amount of freedom and not too much where its like we’re living in an anarchy, but enough that prevents Civil Wars.  Rome made the mistake of not giving rights to certain people, which caused Civil Wars. Because the government already couldn’t control the fast growing population, these wars were definitely not helpful. Moving on to another difference is slavery…….In the Roman empire, slaves were taking a large amount of jobs, but in America one of our main goals is to create more jobs ,which improves and helps the economy. Although we did at one point have slaves, America has learned that the smarter thing to do is have people feel happy in their country.  

By: Nina Yalung, Kendall President, and Michelle Andrade

Links:https://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-s-nye/america-like-rome_b_7147216.html

https://www.moneycrashers.com/united-states-america-roman-empire/

Social Issues

Increased use of spaces put how many romans out of work?

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In ancient rome the slave to free ratio was 1 to 3. Slaves made up 40% of the population. By 2030 scientists believe machine automation could displace up to 30% of jobs

Basic jobs

In ancient rome slaves did the majority of the work cleaning the streets, house work, being cooks, being builders. The free romans became lazy and lost effort. Only people with great talent and brains and great effort kept their jobs. While the untalented had the same talent as the slaves

 

It relates to our current life because education is so important it’s hard to find a job without a good education. College takes a lot of effort and time and if ur lazy and have no effort you might not do well and drop out or even not go. In ancient Rome being very good at something and having a peculiar skill to have a job is very similar to what we have now. Having a college education or getting a masters and in a certain skill are very important. Like say you were a basic chef in Ancient Rome, there were probably many just like you same dishes same skills there would be a lot of competition if new people came with better dishes. That’s just like today. Say you were a basic pizza delivery person and you just delivered pizza for a living and you always took let’s say 30 mins to make and deliver the pizza. Well what if someone came along and could do exactly what you do in 20 mins. Who would work more? The guy who could do it better. That could be the same case for so many jobs. Slaves couldn’t displace jobs like doctors. They needed experience which they didn’t have and needed smarts and study. In our current work in the medical field AI and robots. A major issue is the problem of accountability. Who is responsible for a medical error if no doctor is involved in the diagnosis. What will happen when the AI makes a wrong diagnosis and the doctor goes with it. Who is to blame? Robots will take care of the machines like they do now but they shouldn’t diagnose patients. That should be left to humans. Jobs robots will take over and humans will lose will most likely be taxis, Cars, trains, security. They won’t take over jobs like doctors, police, medical surgery. They don’t have feelings so it would be hard for them to relate and for us to be comfortable with them.

-Joey

 

 

 

Mining

The slaves who had the hardest lives were those who were put to work in the mines. They spent long hours underground in hot and cramped mines. The mines were not safe and often slaves were killed in the mines. There were many forms of Roman mining the main forms were surface mining and deep-vein mining, surface mining being the most common. Romans would locate veins of minerals on the surface by unleashing a powerful flow of water. They would build aqueducts that sometimes could be very long to bring water from rivers and collect them in large tanks. Then the water would be released from the tanks, this method of Roman mining being known as hushing.The aqueducts would also power machines used in Roman mining such as stamp mill and trip hammers used to crush the extracted ore into small pieces before further processing or to filter out precious metals such as gold. Today we use heavy machinery such as excavators, mining drills and blasting tools. Blasting tools are an essential part of the mining industry and are used to break down and fracture materials by use of a calculated amount of explosive to liberate the sought-after product from the waste material. Blasting is also used to remove pockets of unwanted material that are preventing mining machines and personnel to get to the seam containing the materials of interest. Unmanned drill rigs will drill holes at depths and positions on a blast face to ensure that a particular size is achieved. Once this process has been completed, an excavator is used to recover the rocks and other debris that have been blown up during the blasting. The material is then conveyed to a central conveying system which will take it directly to the surface or via a skip and hoist system.

 

 

When & why did all the problems occur?

With the growth in the empire, the number of slaves in Rome grew rapidly. Roman generals in their campaigns abroad sent back thousands of captured soldiers to be sold as slaves. In the campaign against the Gauls (59 to 51 BC) it is reported that JUlius Caesar and his army over a million people were captured as slaves.
The demand for slaves in Rome had also grown during this period. As more and more men were now needed for the army in order to extend and maintain the Roman Empire, there were fewer men available to work the fields.
Slave traders would follow the Roman army abroad on their campaigns. After a battle they would buy the defeated soldiers and their families, and then arrange for them to be sent back to Rome and the other major settlements in the empire.

Why is this kind of problem not gonna occur in the future?

There’s not gonna be this type of problem in the future because slavery is nearly over in the world though there are some countries that still have slaves, thats cause slavery is being reduced and removed from the world slowly.