Comment by actionfromafar

And the current reaction is to make entertainment and potato chips more expensive, and to ban contraceptives and drugs.

The only saving grace of this administration's cruelty is its stupidity. It wants to rule like Rome over slaves, but didn't learn how the rulers kept the populace from uprising and rebelling.

Yes, the time-honored strategy of keeping the poi holloi fed and entertained just enough to prevent riot, but not anymore.

Long-term, it usually fails because the elites become too greedy and too complacent because they haven't seen what a large scale riot looks like, and try to squeeze too much. Then things blow up somewhere and there's a mad scramble to prevent it elsewhere by making concessions (witness all the improvements in labor rights in the West after the Russian revolution).