Recently I came across an apt description of our situation.
The poor grow poorer and the rich become richer: “The distance which separates the rich from other citizens is growing daily . . ." “Their share of national wealth [is] enormous.”
The poor grow poorer and the rich become richer: “The distance which separates the rich from other citizens is growing daily . . ." “Their share of national wealth [is] enormous.”
Public finance is a sham: “The most extraordinary of all expenditure is that incurred by war. . . financed . . . entirely by loans. No new taxation was imposed . . . .” “Nobody asked about extraordinary accounts, where the real cost of the war was recorded.”
As to the mentality of the public: “Belief in plots and conspiracies” is a “sign of the credulity of the times.” That mind-set seeks “simple, universal formulae to resolve any problem, no matter how complex.”
Of course, you have guessed that I am playing historical games; those are comments on France shortly before the collapse of the ancien régime.57 However, there is little that is really new, so the analogy is instructive. As The Preacher put it, “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun. . . . There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance of later things yet to happen among those who come after.”58 In other words, we will continue to make the same mistakes, forever.
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57. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, pp. 23, 65, 67
58. Ecclesiastes 1:9-11, Revised Standard Version
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57. Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution, pp. 23, 65, 67
58. Ecclesiastes 1:9-11, Revised Standard Version
