Historian Johan Norberg explains that one of the major factors in taking down the Roman Empire that’s rarely discussed, is the rise in entitlement spending.

Historian Johan Norberg explains that one of the major factors in taking down the Roman Empire that’s rarely discussed, is the rise in entitlement spending

So many people started receiving welfare and it kept getting expanded, it quickly skyrocket inflation and destroyed their… pic.twitter.com/ELSGXkRAlA

— Wall Street Apes (@WallStreetApes) July 8, 2026

Historian Johan Norberg explains that one of the major factors in taking down the Roman Empire that’s rarely discussed, is the rise in entitlement spending So many people started receiving welfare and it kept getting expanded, it quickly skyrocket inflation and destroyed their currency “What caused the fall of ancient Rome? There were many reasons; disease, famine, barbarian invaders but historian Johan Norberg covers one rarely talked about. You say entitlement spending played a big role” “The emperors wanted to become popular by handing out free stuff to people. Originally, this started small. You just handed the very poor means of subsistence, make sure that they would but that group was enlarged because it was popular — So the group that lived on the public's expense grew larger all the time And emperors complained about this constantly while they were expanding it. Everyone from Caesar and onwards said, "Oh, we've gotta reform this system because it means that we have fewer people working and more people consuming." But no one succeeded. Instead, it was expanded all the time became more and more costly. So the Romans could conquer the world, but they couldn't do entitlement reform” “It just reminds me of what I see in the West” “It's a very worrying sign in each of these civilizations. Once you have an ever-expanding system of entitlements that you can't afford, then you have to deal with it in different ways. Well, some of them just try to conquer other people’s and take their stuff. But once you run out of that, you have to resort to inflation. Rome started to debase the currency — The Emperor Diocletian, he blamed greedy businessmen for inflation, something that we hear today as well. So he imposed price controls on more than 1,000 goods and even imposed the death penalty on any merchant that increased the price above a certain level. But obviously it all failed because he kept debasing the currency. So inflation kept going, prices kept rising, It only happened in the shadow economy and undermined the Roman Empire completely” I looked into this and found roughly 20% of the entire population ended up on welfare, it got so out of control they devalued their currency by 98% This is exactly what’s happening in America

America is Rome and we’re falling the same way they did