Monday, December 26, 2011

Ancient Rome was more equal than modern USA


by Sunny Hundal ? ?
December 24, 2011 at 4:23 pm

The United States is more a unequal society than the Roman empire was, recent research has shown.

Here is an abstract of a paper published by Cambridge Journals:

Different methods of estimating the Gross Domestic Product of the Roman Empire in the second century C.E. produce convergent results that point to total output and consumption equivalent to 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year.

It is estimated that ?lites (around 1.5 per cent of the imperial population) controlled approximately one-fifth of total income, while middling households (perhaps 10 per cent of the population) consumed another fifth. These findings shed new light on the scale of economic inequality and the distribution of demand in the Roman world.

the top 1.5% then controlled around 20% of the assets in the Roman empire according to their estimates.

Meanwhile, in the United States the top 1% currently own over 40% of the country?s wealth.


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Source: http://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/12/24/ancient-rome-was-more-equal-than-modern-usa/

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