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Comment by AdamN | Hacker News Reader

That's even worse. It presents even more clearly that the United States has been captured by the upper class, who pay all the bills but also receive all the proceeds (aside from small supports to keep the lower and middle classes working and productive).

This isn't much different than Rome, which of course the US is modeled on.

The only solution is a wealth tax for the next 10 years which dovetails into more sensible taxation on capital gains to prevent this from happening again.

The thing is that most CEOs of Fortune 500 companies aren't even in the 1%, which requires $11.1MM in assets:

https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/1212/average-net...

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The Fortune 500 CEOs might be closer than you think. Median pay last year was $12.7 million.

[1] https://www.equilar.com/reports/83-equilar-associated-press-...

$12.7MM/year taxed at 30% (remember, these are workers) means $9MM/year. Presuming they spend half of that it would take 3 years to get to the 1% threshold ... many CEOs don't make it 3 years.

Basically, Fortune 500s are probably minting about 100-200 1 percenters a year. A drop in the bucket compared to inherited and capital gains wealth.

> This isn't much different than Rome, which of course the US is modeled on.

Do you have a source for either of these claims? I can’t seem to find a clear one, especially for the latter claim.

Here's an academic article on how ancient Rome influenced the writing of the US Constitution:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3290141

> Here's an academic article on how ancient Rome influenced the writing of the US Constitution

Influenced. Not modeled on. Every republic since Cæsar has been influenced by Rome, including but not limited to its discussion on the relative benefits of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy.

What Republic has had the most influence on the USA?

There were very few republics between the fall of Rome and 1776. All basically local governments and very feeble.

> What Republic has had the most influence on the USA?

Not a republic, not technically, but the English Parliament, no doubt. Bicameralism, impeachment, an executive cabinet--these did not exist in the Roman Republic.

Of course, English democratic tradition was influenced by Rome's. As was America's. But it's a stretch to say the U.S. was "modeled" on the Roman Republic. It was a new system of government. (If one were to claim it was modeled on anything, it would have to be the English government.)

"Modeled on" doesn't mean singularly Rome. It just means that Rome was one of the models.

From what I remember (I did a masters in history about a decade ago), Eran Shalev's _Rome Reborn on Western Shores_ was the main book on the subject (edit: the subject being Rome / the classics and early American political culture generally, not specifically the US Constitution).

That said, there was some debate over the influence of Rome on early American political debates, with others citing either "classical republicanism" or the pre-English Civil War debates on the English constitution as more important influences (for example, JGA Pocock or Gordon Wood).

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