I've had the galleys for Chris Wickham's book "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000" on my bedside table for months now. It sits there with other books I really want to read, but can't seem to get to because I have so much I have to read for my job. David Frum loved it, and reviews the book here. Excerpt:
This transition helps us to understand the most powerful and fruitful idea in Wickham's book.As he tells it, the most important dividing line between "ancient" and "medieval" - the profoundest marker of the "fall of Rome" was not a matter of language or culture, of the shift from togas to tunics or from stuffed swan to roast meat. The most important dividing line was the loss of the power and capacity to tax.
The Roman emperors had imposed a wide variety of taxes on trade and land. The revenues from these taxes supported the army and provided the free grain ration to the populations of Rome and Constantinople.
After the breakup of the empire, the successor states tried to maintain the old Roman taxes. Some - like the Merovingian Franks - succeeded for a time. But sooner or later, all these tax systems broke down. The world had become too poor, trade and agriculture too unproductive, to yield a positive return on the effort invested in tax collection.
Instead, rulers began assigning lands to their supporters - on the understanding that the supporters and their tenants would follow the ruler to war when summoned. Land assignment was much less efficient than taxation, and the opportunity it presented for treachery was obvious, but as the world narrowed, what other choice was there?
This passage from Frum's piece made me wonder what would happen if the American people began a widespread tax revolt. That is, what if the US government, pressed hard by massive indebtedness and entitlement commitments -- which, as we know, will take up all federal tax revenues by mid-century, absent serious reform -- raised taxes so high that people either could not or would not pay them. What then? Do you see this as a realistic possibility? Thoughts?
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Suspect that long-term having tax cheats like Geithner and Rangel make non-compliance more of a possibility. Having the corrupt promlugate rules for eithers while ignoring them is corrosive to authority. The only reason mass noncompliance is less of a possibility is that Americans are comfortable with "voluntary" withhoding by their employers. But at a higher more confiscatory level, many will opt out, which they legally can do(nominally to do withholding themselves).And then, who knows.
If in the future taxes raise so much that people cannot pay for them, at least we could work to pay them. It means we would be all working for the government, that is to say, we would have achieved the communist-market utopia of sustainable development for the people's welfare. China, not the US, would be in this case the leading world economy and ideology for our future.
Rod: "It sits there with other books I really want to read, but can't seem to get to because I have so much I have to read for my job."
Rod, this is truly interesting. What other books lay in that pile? What's the latest book to be added to that pile?
Razib Kahn at Gene Expression on Chris Wickham's book "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000" :
Chris Wickham's book "The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages, 400-1000"
Here's that Razib link:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2009/10/means-of-taxation.php
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