The Other Way To Bleed the Rich: Best Practices From Ancient Rome

Roman, Renaissance, and Greek ideas for getting the richest 1% to help the society they owe everything to.

As wealth inequality has risen to never-before-seen heights, Americans are calling for forced redistribution on a massive scale. In the United States, long a bastion of laissez-faire, politicians are proposing wealth taxes and increased social spending to remedy the perceived injustice of 1% of the population holding 32.3% of the wealth. 

But the ancient Romans (who had less wealth inequality than we do) offer another model that might have fewer downsides. The Roman Empire’s elite willingly gave away massive amounts of their wealth, far more than the <1% of net worth average of America’s richest people today. This led to a reduction in poverty, a flourishing of the arts, and cities enlivened by beauty and cultural amenities. The result was so striking that its crumbling remnants helped inspired the Renaissance¹.

The Roman’s trick wasn’t to bleed the rich, but to help the rich become enthusiastic self-bleeding machines. 

In this essay I’m going to explore ideas that could help us achieve similar ends.

The Uncomfortable Wedding of Rich and Poor

There was always animosity between rich and poor in ancient Rome. In the Republic's early days, the plebeians revolted and went on strike during the “secessio plebis,” and the patricians granted the common people great political power to win them back. But the plebeians rarely used their power so long as the elites held up their side of a bargain — you can lead us and keep your status, wealth, and power, but in return you must shower us with our share of Rome’s greatness. 

This bargain was continuously renegotiated for centuries, the animosity never completely dying down.

“The masses hate a rich man who does not share his property more than a poor man who steals public property,” the ancient historian Plutarch tells us².

The orator Cicero agreed, but suggests the way out of this bind: “the Roman people hate private luxury, but they love public magnificence³.”

The result was a bit of standoff and continuous renegotiation, in which the rich aggrandized their communities with beautiful buildings, entertainment, education, and aid for the poor, while those communities “could impose obligations and values upon benefactors…through demands for certain kinds of services and amenities…⁴”

The exchange was hardly one-sided. These massive outlays gave the rich an opportunity to gather prestige and compete with their peers on the level playing field of increasing their civilization’s greatness. Public inscriptions found in ruined forums, gymnasiums, and libraries laud the men and women who built them, their magnanimousness remembered for centuries.

He who is patron of the nicest city wins, so to speak. If your streets are filled with starving people, there’s no grand forum to walk through, and the citizens are ignorant from lack of a public library, what worth could you and your great family possibly have?

America’s Wealthiest Are Different

Rome’s elite usually inherited their wealth and weren’t particularly entrepreneurial. Today we’d call them trust fund babies. 

But the modern American socio-economic picture is a constant churn of people rocketing up the income ladder, but often not staying at the top for long. 

Around 73% of Americans will spend a year among the top 20 percent of income earners. Only 0.6% of those who claw their way into the top 1% will stay there for 10 consecutive years⁵⁶.

Although a significant number of the 400 richest people in the country by net worth inherited some wealth from their parents, roughly 70% are self-made⁷, and second-generation billionaires lose their place at the top pretty quickly⁸.

Today, the poorest US citizens have a quality of life that was unimaginable a century ago, telling us that for all its problems, capitalism is doing some things right.

“The poor enjoy what the rich could not before afford. What were the luxuries have become the necessaries of life. The laborer has now more comforts than the landlord had a few generations ago.” — Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth

So Americans can’t really oppose an entrenched and entitled elite so much as fellow citizens who are periodically very wealthy, and whose children tend to lose their top spot.

John Steinbeck, roughly paraphrased, once quipped that socialism never took hold in America because the “poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

They probably see themselves that way because there’s a significant amount of truth to it. 

Americans admire rich billionaires who rise to the top through hard work and intelligence, and support for widespread wealth redistribution remains low⁹.

So if Roman-style animosity toward the rich doesn’t translate to the American system, what does? 

Building Civilization Is Better Than a Yacht

Wealthy Romans didn’t consider their choice limited between hair shirt philanthropy on one hand and the pleasures of consumer goods and villas on the other. They believed philanthropic giving to be among the more enjoyable, long-lasting, and desirable goods they could throw their money at.    

As one historian put it: “The Roman aristocracy was a unique historical entity, which rather than extol the purity of its blood, sang its own praises in terms drawn from the vocabulary of the ancient city…”.¹⁰

Although benevolence and keeping plebeian uprisings at bay were significant inducements, the Romans were ultimately jockeying for status and building a civilization — or at least a local culture — they could be proud of. Giving was the canvas through which they painted their greatness upon the world. 

If you sponsor a hundred artists and writers and half a dozen turn into Donatello, Virgil, Michelangelo, Rafael, Horace, and Leonardo Da Vincis, you’ve come out so far ahead that no other ROI could match it.

The modern version of philanthropy involves getting your name on a building you threw a check at, but little interest in the human or community scale of patronage, and the glory of adding another brick to civilization’s greatness. There’s too much of a disconnect between the idea of patronage and actual patronage, as the Romans or Renaissance Italians would have understood it.

The Broken Model of American Wealth Flexing

The Roman elite — particularly in the provinces — didn’t spend most of their time interacting with other rich people. Much of their year was spent embedded among poorer citizens, and so they weren’t playing “keeping up with the Julii” nearly as much as our richest try to keep up with the Jones.   

Brooke Harrington, a professor at the Copenhagen Business School who studies the financial practices of the world’s super-wealthy, said they don’t ask if they have enough money to buy a toy they’re lusting after, but rather “Do I have as much or more than these people I’m comparing myself with?”¹¹. With the Forbes 400 list being published every year, and the richest people having mansions next to each other in the country’s elite neighborhoods, that’s a question that is usually answered in the negative.  

Because they compare themselves with the 1% instead of the 99% far below, they have skewed perspectives that requires them to hoard ever more riches — more houses, bigger yachts, more money in the bank account. This is the way the American elite wealth-flex, and it’s exactly the sort of outsized, wasteful indulgence that so angered the Roman lower classes.

The problem isn’t their total assets, since much of it represents control of companies that improve the quality of life of even the poorest among us — but rather prestige and pleasure spending that’s obscene given the scale of America’s problems.

“To these who propose to substitute Communism for this intense Individualism the answer, therefore, is: The race has tried that. All progress from that barbarous day to the present time has resulted from its displacement. Not evil, but good, has come to the race from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it.”
— Andrew Carnegie, The Gospel of Wealth

For instance, America’s billionaires have spent the last few decades developing a yacht fetish. Not your “humble” $30 million yacht, but ones costing as much as half a billion dollars¹². When we add this to their massive number of mostly-empty mansions, cars, private jets, and other amenities, we have to ask when morality begins to creep into the picture.

So while Americans have no reason to hate the rich, and trying to drain them of investment capital through taxation works against everyone’s interests, we should push back against their abandonment of the very society that allowed them to build their fortunes. 

Americans need to start voicing the idea that there’s something wrong with society’s richest people — and those most able to help it — leaving it to moulder and limp forward on its own diminished steam.

The primary aim should be to shift wealth flexing from opulent consumer purchases to making our cities beautiful and culturally rich, educating our people, and caring for our poor and downtrodden. This was once the way elite competition happened, and it’s time to return to form. 

Stitching Society Back Together:

Besides acting as a wealth-flexing mechanism, Roman giving had an underlying philosophical playbook for giving created by its greatest minds.

The Roman orator Cicero insisted the wealthy had a moral obligation to use their resources for the public good, particularly via investment in its cities¹³. Seneca, a Stoic philosopher and statesman, thought philanthropy must be targeted to generate gratitude between the vertical ranks of Roman society, and argued this formed the glue that held the Roman people together¹⁴. 

During times of strain, this extra glue made all the difference, and partially explains Rome’s longevity. During its first Punic War with the wealthy North African city-state of Carthage, Rome was defeated multiple times and lost many fleets of ships. The public treasury was soon empty. Rome was teetering on the brink of disaster and the common people could bear no more taxes; then the Roman elite stepped in. They bankrolled the entire war effort and the construction of a new fleet of ships with their personal fortunes. In 241 B.C. this new push proved decisive, and Carthage was forced to sue for peace and give up their goal of conquering Sicily.

Carthage was far wealthier than Rome, but its richest citizens were unwilling to underwrite its welfare in the Roman manner. Within a few generations Carthage would be nothing but dust, yet the culture birthed in Rome, partially as a result of the grand philanthropy of its richest citizens, still lives on. 

Now, Modern America is tearing itself apart, class and wealth divides are growing, and politics have become increasingly acrimonious and unproductive. 

A massive Roman-style effort by the country’s richest could yet be the glue that stops the nation from unraveling.

The Scale Of Their Resources:

In 2022, the top 1% of Americans held $43.45 trillion. For comparison, the US federal budget was $6.3 trillion. So the wealthiest 1% of Americans could fund the US government for 6.8 years, with all its wars, social spending, and other costs. 

If even a fraction of this wealth was used for philanthropy, it could transform the face of American society. But the 400 richest people in the United States give less than 1% of their net worth to charity over the course of their lifetimes, a fraction of what poorer people give¹⁵.

America’s 1% is already entrepreneurial, and their competition should take the form of seeing who can do the most good. The same competition that drives their economic success could drive their philanthropic innovation. 

Seneca argued for just that entrepreneurial touch, insisting philanthropists should select causes that create the most good and maximize recipients' appreciation. 

A Formula That’s Worked Before

If you think this is unrealistic, and that modern entrepreneurs will never embrace Roman-style philanthropy, we should remember that it’s already happened. Twice.  

Medieval Italians, lead by Petrarch, became painfully aware of how far they’d fallen from the heights of Roman Civilization, and they wanted to do something about it. Their countryside was too dangerous to travel through without armed guards, the great artists and writers of antiquity had vanished, and their cities were far cries from the grand ruins of Roman civilization they could see around them. 

Writers, architects, educators, and artists tried to reclaim and build on the lost achievements of the Romans, but they had an important ally. Business tycoons enriched by trade, textiles, and banking, and well-versed in the philanthropic idea of Seneca and Cicero — bankrolled their projects. They recognized that building up their cities generated soft power and the societal harmony required for long-term growth.

The idea was to improve mankind through charity and learning, but also to make the underlying philosophies of the Classical era tangible. The result was public buildings and art based on Roman ideas intended to uplift everyone, foster contemplation and virtue, and bind the citizenry into a harmonious whole.  

Within a few generations their work transformed Italy, and the results still draw millions of tourists each year, eager to gap at the majesty of their success. 

“May I say it without offending you, O men of ancient times: the Golden Age is inferior to the time in which we now live,” wrote 15th-century Florentine Ugolino Verino¹⁶.

Multiple invasions of Italy by outside powers ended the prosperity that fueled the Renaissance, but the philanthropic tradition lived on. 

With the birth of the Industrial Revolution, newly-enriched business titans devoted themselves to philanthropy in the Renaissance mode. A survey of 466 upper-class wills processed in London during the 1890s showed 26% of the wealth being bequeathed to all manner of charities¹⁷.

The cultural institutions and most prominent public buildings of the United State’s east coast cities were largely built during this era, often with private dollars. What would New York be without its MET, public libraries, or Carnegie Hall? Nothing build since the 1940s has had anywhere near the cultural impact, nor engendered the same idea of a cohesive culture and a great society.  

The Forgotten Part of the Formula 

Although there are many great modern American philanthropists, by and large the nation’s richest have dropped the ball, now donating just a tiny fraction of their net worth to charity.

The gilded-age philanthropist Andrew Carnegie gave away more than 95% of his fortune and built thousands of libraries across a dozen countries.

He had nothing but disdain for the ostentatious lifestyles and wealth competition he saw his peers indulging in, and urged them to turn their entrepreneurial spirit to philanthropy and give away most of their wealth to benefit society.

He drew on his faith and the same tradition that fueled the Renaissance to make this argument in his famous, “Gospel of Wealth,” essay, urging the country’s elites to do better. 

But he recognized that not everyone would do the right thing and felt they should be induced to contribute. 

He suggested the US government take most of a person’s estate after death, leaving only a small amount for heirs. 

“This policy would work powerfully to induce the rich man to attend to the administration (for the public good) of wealth during his life,” he wrote

It's unclear if Carnegie realized it, but his ideal of willing, self-directed philanthropy backed by forced redistribution for the unwilling is an ancient one. The philanthropy of ancient Greece, which the Romans were copying, followed this model.

In democratic Athens, for instance, rich men competed to meet the needs of the city, constructing public buildings, building fleets, and putting on shows in the theater. But men of great fortune who did not willing give were soon summoned to the Assembly meet the needs of the city, and turning down such a request was both a great dishonor and usually resulted in a seizure of their assets¹⁸¹⁹. 

In a public speech, a rich Athenian heir complained, “my father in the whole course of his life, has spent more on the city than for himself and his family - twice what we have now"²⁰.

Given the scale of the man’s wealth compared to his fellow citizens, Carnegie would likely be unmoved. 

“...the man who dies leaving behind many millions of available wealth, which was his to administer during life, will pass away ‘unwept, unhonored, and unsung,’ no matter to what uses he leaves the dross which he cannot take with him,” he wrote. “Of such as these the public verdict will then be: "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced."

1. Perlot, Andrew. 2023. The Surprising Philanthropy of Rome’s One Percent.

2. Hands, A.R. 1968. Charities and Social Aid in Greece and Rome. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 41; citing Plutarch, Mor. 821 F.

3. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Pro Murena.

4. Rogers, Guy. 1993. The Gift and Society in Roman Asia: Orthodoxies and Heresies. Scripta Classica Israelica 12.

5. Carroll, Robert. Income Mobility and the Persistence of Millionaires, 1999 to 2007. The Tax Foundation.

6. Perry, Mark. Evidence Shows Significant Income Mobility in the US – 73% of Americans Were in the ‘top 20%’ for at Least a Year. The American Enterprise Institute

7. Ponciano, Jonathan. 2020. The Forbes 400 Self-Made Score: From Silver Spooners To Bootstrappers.

8. Erosion of the 1982 Forbes 400 listees and their families in subsequent lists. HumanProgress.org.

9. Walker, Jesse. Et al. 2021. People are more tolerant of inequality when it is expressed in terms of individuals rather than groups at the top. Oct, 2021.

10. Veyne, Paul. 1997 The Roman Empire. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. )

11. Pinsker, Joe. 2018. The Reason Many Ultrarich People Aren’t Satisfied With Their Wealth. The Atlantic.

12. Kay, Grace. “The luxury boats owned by some of the wealthiest people in tech…” Business Insider. Jul 1, 2023,

13. Cicero, Marcus Tulius. 44 B.C. “On Duties.”

14. Seneca, The Younger, Lucius Annaeus. 59. A.D. “On Benefits”

15. Perlot, Andrew. 2023. “The Surprising Philanthropy of Rome’s One Percent.”

16. Baldassarri, Sefano Ugo. 2000. “Images of Quattrocento Florence: Selected Writings in Literature, History, and Art.” Yale University Press.

17. Read, Donald. 1979. “England 1868–1914: The age of urban democracy.” pp 129–130)

18. Ober, Josiah. 1991. Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens. Princeton University Press. pg 199.

19. Gabrielsen, Vincent. 2010. “Financing the Athenian Fleet.” Johns Hopkins University Press.

20. Lysias, On the Property of Aristophanes. Lysias with an English translation by W.R.M. Lamb, M.A. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1930.)