Now, more than ever, productive people will go where they’re treated well. It’s a lesson the US government will learn to its sorrow. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:
George, my paternal grandfather, looked around England, where the family had been since the eleventh century, and decided that a national fdecline had begun.
Although England was still very much an empire, it had fallen into the decline that ancient Rome had experienced before it. Where it had once expanded its possessions and profited from them, it was now spending millions of pounds maintaining them. The less profitable colonies were becoming a liability and the more profitable ones were breaking away.
In addition, the British class structure was beginning to break down. The ruling class were becoming lazy and unproductive and, increasingly, were bleeding the lower classes in order to continually expand their own idle privilege.
Worse, Britain had fallen into a seemingly never-ending series of wars. Wars have always impoverished countries, creating the necessity of increased taxation. And in the early twentieth century, all of Europe was spoiling for a war that was to become the “Great War.”
Historically, these conditions always have led to decline in a nation or empire, leaving the new generation of adults with a worse future than their antecedents had had. Continue reading
