Summary Of How Adaptive Government Killed Ancient Rome By Bruce Hoffman

Mia Hoffman
The author, Bruce Bartlett, was born October 11, 1951. He has an education from both Rutgers University and Georgetown University. He studied under Lloyd Gardner for American diplomatic history at Rutgers and studied under Julius Davis at Georgetown. He researched much of the Pearl Harbor attack, doing a master's thesis for it at Georgetown, the thesis was later published as Coverup: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941-1946. He was a diplomatic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official under George H. W. Bush. He has written several books and magazine articles.
One of the main topics covered in the article, How Excessive Government Killed Ancient Rome, was the debasement of the currency. Nero started the debasement of currency and reduced the silver content of a Denarius to 90% (Bartlett, 294). This started the inflation of many costs in Rome. It also led to the downfall of economic growth. Since the Denarius had a lesser content of silver it was not worth as much as it used to be, causing the prices to rise for many goods which then, in turn, led to people losing wealth. It caused a substantial standstill

Rome showed much socialism because the government gave out free bread to everyone and in some parts the taxation was not focused on the individual but on the community, so everyone contributed to better his fellow man. Because of the economic standstill the money and tax systems broke down and it made it so there was even more of a socialist view (Bartlet, 296). People instead of having taxes in money had to pay their taxes in worldly items. Farmers gave food and animals as their taxation. Craftsman gave their crafts as taxation. The taxes were used to build an even stronger army that the emperor thought was necessary for his power as well as because Rome was getting attacked on virtually all sides everyone wanted to get at them and crush it for their own