Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” catchcry acknowledges that America’s on the skids, but is it possible to resurrect it from its downward course?

Most unlikely, IMO, because America continues to exhibit the key feature which ensured the collapse of all previous empires: that is, that the wealth of the plutocracy had came at great cost to its people. The nation had become rotten at its core, leaving the plebs in socio-economic distress. Vast inequalities arose.

Indeed, that Trump was re-elected was surely the final cri de coeur from the American people. They’ve had enough.

Pliny the Elder foresaw the tanking of Ancient Rome into collapse but his was a voice in the wilderness: “Latifundia perdidere Italiam“: the great landed estates destroyed Italy. (Pliny’s nephew came to be in it in a big way, too, BTW!)

How could dealing in real estate have generated Ancient Rome’s collapse?

In much the same way as America and we in the west generally are currently doing it. As the price of land has become prohibitive for an increasingly indebted and impoverished people, the uber-wealthy have revelled in it, buying up more and more real estate at costs only they can afford. Others may try, but they’re in debt which will be impossible to repay.

In these days of the American Empire, on top of the pumping of real estate prices (more accurately land prices) so beloved of banking and real estate interests, we’ve tended to tax small businesses into oblivion as we favoured monopoly rent seeking companies, such as Amazon, Google, &c.

The plebs need to recover the ‘economic rent’ (surplus product) from the plutocrats, by way of a universal income to which they’re equally entitled. However, it’s not happening; nor is the un-taxing of purchases and earned incomes.

Thus, we face the disastrous times of empire collapse.

Hey, but other than that, everything’s fine, folks!

[Apologies! I’m told it’s impolite to say things that economists, real estate analysts and social commentators have refused to say.]