Martin Wolf: a necessary condition for political stability in a liberal democracy - “bröd och skådespel åt folket”
I would not claim that everything comes down to economics.
People care about other things, too — immigration, crime, health, education and so forth.
But a good economy — one with widely shared economic growth — is, I would argue,
a necessary condition for political stability in a liberal democracy.
The fundamental problem is that the UK has not had that for two decades. It is not alone in this. But the deterioration in its performance since 2007 has been enormous (as has been also true of other large European economies).
Martin Wolf Financial Times May 25 2026
https://www.ft.com/content/a1334546-73e9-4149-bb13-6f0999b5db91?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Uttrycket “bröd och skådespel åt folket” syftar på en gammal härskarstrategi: håll massorna nöjda och passiva genom mat och underhållning i stället för verkligt politiskt inflytande.
Ursprung i Romarriket
Frasen kommer från latinets “panem et circenses” och myntades av den romerske satirikern Juvenalis runt 100-talet e.Kr.
Han beskrev hur det romerska folket hade tappat sina politiska ambitioner och nöjde sig med spannmålsutdelningar och spektakel i stället för medborgardygd och självstyre
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/a274dd58-7d1e-49e3-90ed-ecaadccf12a6
IN THE FIRST CENTURY AD, a merchant setting off from Rome on a journey to Cologne was able to pay his bills with the same coin, the denarius, over his entire journey.
Initially, Rome safeguarded cohesion of its large empire by fire and sword, then increasingly by placing even the most remote provinces under the legal system and administration of Rome.
The precise lessons to be drawn from such historical episodes may not be entirely clear.
Professor Otmar Issing, Member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, Paper for the Conference 2001 of the European Society for the History of Economic Thought
https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2023/09/killar-tanker-pa-romarriket-mer-eller.html
Kommentarer