The Roman Empire an Economic Failure - 2064 Words

The history of economics is often only discussed from Mercantilism to the present era and the Neo-Classical school. However, Many of these economic theories that are discussed today originated over a millennia before in the Roman Empire. Prior to the insurgence of mercantilism was the era of the dark ages and the infamous feudal system that time and time again has been proven only to hinder growth or stop it all together. The feudal system didnt just appear from nowhere it was slowly developed over time and emerged out of a more complex economic system that mirrors the economies that arose from the feudal system. The Romans over centuries had developed a complex and volatile economy based on currency and free trade. However, the Roman†¦show more content†¦Stated more clearly, if silver becomes more abundant then the (fig 1.1) demand curve shifts left and the price or value decreases. Thus if your wealth is all in silver you could lose a lot of money. It would be as if your N ew York Stock Notes were used as cash instead of a coin. This caused many problems for the Romans to solve. Now putting the issue of currency to the side let us look deeper into other economic decisions that were made. The practice of distributing free food cost a large sum of money and the only way to combat this was to raise taxes. In the early stages of the empire Rome used a wealth tax on all forms of property, including land, houses, slaves, animals, money and personal effects.(Bartlett, 1994) At this time the tax was based on what was needed to pay for the army; and the tax was levied on individuals. As the Roman Empire expanded the tax became too difficult to collect so the tax was levied on communities instead. Another wrong decision made by the Romans was to institute tax farming. This was primarily done to ease the collection of taxes and in theory sounds to be a good choice. The system worked this way; an individual would choose a district and pay that districts taxes upfront. In sense giving the government a loan for the year, then the individual would go and collect the taxes. However, in practice this system was horrible because the tax collector would not only collect the tax but he would also addShow MoreRelatedThe Rise Of The Roman Empire1611 Words   |  7 PagesRome was an empire with extremely high aspirations and expectations from. Its founders chose to steal women from neighboring villages, in order to grow its population. These aggressive and expansionary ideologies remained within the personalities of every Roman, living inside the great empire 755 years later. And yet despite its vast military presence and growing cities and towns, the Roman Empire and its capital still succumbed to a barbarian takeover. 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