Panem et Circenses

 United States of America is currently the reigning superpower and many would claim that that will not change anytime soon, but those people would be wrong. The United States is currently facing economic struggles just barely avoiding the fiscal cliff but this does not end their economic problems. America is outsourcing much of its industries leaving many American’s without a job. America's obsession with the world of sports echos the roman's “bread and circuses”. Do to these factors and the rise of eastern powerhouse China we cannot logically justify the belief that America will sustain the power it has.

Economic instability has to often been the dagger in the fall of empires all to often throughout history. President Barrack Obama recently avoided the fiscal cliff for those that don’t know the fiscal cliff is the result of the budget control act of 2011 coming into effect this would have raised payroll taxes by two percent, the start of taxes caused by Obama’s new healthcare laws would also add to the total Americans paid in taxes. The USA is not the first society to face this problem, Rome faced the increased costs to provide defence for its empire and increased heavily that taxes that where paid by the wealth as the USA has now done raising taxes for the wealthier Americans. This means individuals earning four hundred thousand dollars a year or more and couples earning four hundred fifty thousand dollars a year or more will dish out nearly forty percent of their yearly income in taxes that is up five percent from last year.

As if raising the peoples taxes wasn’t enough between 2008 and 2010 four hundred fifty thousand jobs in the USA were lost do to outsourcing to China. The lure of saving money on employees salaries by outsourcing work to countries like China is to powerful for companies to resist and that is not the only way jobs are in 2008 it the number of illegal immigrants was estimated to be about eleven million people. About thirty three percent of illegal immigrants had jobs taking income away from legal citizens doesn’t sound like a big deal until you consider that in December of 2012 eight percent of Americans where unemployed. Unemployment became a major problem in Rome at the height of the roman empire most citizens did not work they had slaves from non roman controlled territories do their work. So it was no longer necessary to hire unskilled labourers to do the heavy labour.

Of course with less citizens working it means less tax coming in and more money being dished out by the government to take care of the unemployed population. So how did Rome deal with the unemployment problem? Well much like modern American they distracted the general population with panem et circenses, translating to bread and circuses. The Emperor hosted gladiator games, beast hunts, chariot races and naval battles in the Colosseum in Rome the games were free to go and watch and between shows there would be loaves of bread thrown into the crowd. Today we experience something similar although even during the worst economic times people are still willing to pay to watch a sporting event we see this in the statistics the seventy percent of American’s watch/follow sports on a regular bases, were as only thirty-six percent of American’s follow politics closely. Both professional and collegiate Sports obviously take precedent over politics in the minds of most Americans.

Between the raise in taxes, lose of jobs to illegal immigrants/outsourcing and the people's lack of education on the subject, the belief that the same fate that befell Rome and Greece can be avoided by the United States is ridiculous. Both Rome and Greece were far more dominant during there time than the USA was at its prime. So in the end there is no evidence that America can pull away from the the path that it is currently headed down.

http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/feminism-responsible-for-the-fall-of-rome/

http://hotbedinfo.com/2011/06/top-10-similarities-between-the-fall-of-rome-and-the-fall-of-america/

http://bonds.about.com/od/Issues-in-the-News/a/What-Is-The-Fiscal-Cliff.htm

http://stephenbaskerville.blogspot.ca/2009/06/my-review-of-carle-zimmermans-classic.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States

http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0909/Gallup_More_Americans_follow_political_news.html

http://jss.sagepub.com/content/15/2/115.abstract

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danikenson/2012/07/11/outsourcing-for-dummies-including-the-willfully-ignorant/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States

https://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&idim=country:US&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=unemployment%20rate%20usa