Matt Blair“Groceries are the trendy new splurge” is exactly the sort of thing one says on the way to the guillotine. https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-gen-z-splurge-groceries-spending-inflation-gen-z-boomers-2024-4
James Derry@mjmbca it has a certain “let them eat cake vibe”, no?
@jamesderry Frankly, it’s a little on the nose!
cibo@mjmbca @jamesderry
"the staple food of the French peasantry and the working class was bread, absorbing 50 percent of their income, as opposed to 5 percent on fuel; the whole topic of bread was therefore the result of obsessional national interest."
Lady Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, p. 124., I found it on wikipedia.
It's surprisingly on the nose
"the staple food of the French peasantry and the working class was bread, absorbing 50 percent of their income, as opposed to 5 percent on fuel; the whole topic of bread was therefore the result of obsessional national interest."
Lady Antonia Fraser, Marie Antoinette: The Journey, p. 124., I found it on wikipedia.
It's surprisingly on the nose
@cibo @mjmbca you can go further back. It was known in the Roman republic that the senate needed to ensure “bread and circuses” for the plebeian class. Meaning if you didn’t feed the mass of people and keep them entertained (distracted) they could become rapidly a hostile mob that would be problematic for the upper classes.
The threat is pretty clear to me. When there is too much disparity, the wealth becomes forcibly redistributed.