The citizens of Rome were driven to poverty due to tax collections and this meant that they were not even able to take care of themselves. There are also some differences involved with the decline of these empires. One difference is the military. The Roman military was very strong and it could do whatever it wanted. Because of this, the Roman military acted as the controller of the empire, instead of the actual government.
Most of Rome’s currency was silver coins and as a result of the empire not gaining any more wealth from plundering and looting from conflicts they reduced the amount of silver used in the coins. Because of this roman citizens were charging higher prices for items so they would be receiving the same amount of silver. Inflation was not the empires only concern with the economy. The defense of the empire was very expensive and Rome also needed to maintain an active military, as a result Rome raised taxes that the average roman citizen could not afford.” The maintenance of the army and of the vast bureaucracy required by centralized government lead to strangling taxation” (The New Deal in Old Rome). Even with the raised taxes it could not provide enough money to maintain the empire.
With this it decreased taxes collected and kept them from being able pay troops. The weak economy was the catalyst for the fall of the Western Roman Empire. If the Roman leaders had not been so power hungry and cause civil wars, brining chaos to the Roman government, then perhaps they could have been prepared for the German tribes that were coming in to capture Rome. It is apparent, through all of the problems that came to the late Roman Empire, the Roman treasury by barbarian tribes, discontinuing of trade between the east and west that the leaders of Rome following the Pax Romana were not paying adequate attention to the state of the empire. If they had been ruling sufficiently, then most of these problems that Rome faced could and would have been avoided, and the empire would have restored
However, the government blamed the financial problems on the workers and especially the unions as strikes caused workforce to stop and the government went to the IMF, this however does not include Wilsons decision to devalue the pound as this was damaging on the economy because people were getting loess for their money and it disheartened a lot of the population. Source 7 agrees that the Labour Government’s failures outweigh its successes as it’s ‘achievements were not enough to dispel the impression
Many factors contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Many internal conditions weakened Rome. According to documents, one thing that led to the decline of Rome was the heavy taxes. Much of the money Rome lost was to strangling taxation that led to many struggles. Another problem was citizens feeling like they did not have a say in politicts what Rome chose to do.
A balance of trade deficit began to occur. The cost of government, including the military and welfare, became burdensome.Class economic warfare broke out between the rich and poor.Parts of the empire were not taxed whileothers were overtaxed. The small farm all but disappeared. D. Political Causes.The Romans never really solved the problem of succession. The government was not designed to rule a large,polyglot empire and reform came too late.
US industries were producing more goods then it could sell, this is bad because if the people are not buying goods it becomes useless and people needed to but them so that the economy grows but instead people didn’t buy because they had them already, therefore it was wasteful as no one wanted to buy, so it decreased the wealth of the economy. The most important reasons why the Wall Street crash happened were; the speculation ‘on the margin’, this was important because buying shares with a banks money and not being able to repay
Hyperinflation happened because Germany owed so much money due to reparations of the war, it simply thought that it would just be able to print more money, but when a government prints money that it does not have the value of money decreases and prices go up. In Germany this was a huge problem as inflation was rising at astonishing rates and the effects were disastrous. Many people that had worked hard are there lives were forced to become beggars as the pensions and savings lost all value. The people that had jobs were still in disastrous positions, as their wages could not keep up with the increasing rate of inflation. People were not blaming the Kaisers war government but instead they were blaming the Weimar government, as they were the ones that had agreed to pay the war reparations in the treaty of Versailles.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire was pretty bad. The government raised taxes. The economy suffered with inflation that dropped the value of money with a rise in prices. The empire’s economic crisis was worsened by the growing military troubles. The fall of Rome torn everything apart and it was impossible to fix.
The Republic had a lot of failures such as the senates not able to agree with each other, which slowed them to respond and provide the needs of the people. The officials that were appointed by the senates that only stay for two years led the military. It negatively impacts the military because the leaders lacked of experience. The government also became more corrupt because of their desire for power and wealth. Lastly, the gap between the rich and the poor expanded and the rights of the plebeians were limited.