STREET DOGS

From The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant:

In progressive societies the concentration [of wealth] may reach a point where the strength of number in the many poor rivals the strength of ability in the few rich; then the unstable equilibrium generates a critical situation, which history has diversely met by legislation redistributing wealth or by revolution distributing poverty.

In the Athens of 594 BC the disparity of fortune between the rich and the poor had reached its height, so that the city seemed to be in a dangerous condition, and no other means for freeing it from disturbances … seemed possible but despotic power. The poor, finding their status worsened with each year — the government in the hands of their masters … began to talk of violent revolt. The rich, angry at the challenge to their property, prepared to defend themselves by force. Good sense prevailed; moderate elements secured the election of Solon, a businessman of aristocratic lineage, to the supreme archonship. He devalued the currency, thereby easing the burden of all debtors; he reduced all personal debts, and ended imprisonment for debt; he cancelled arrears for taxes and mortgage interest; he established graduated income tax that made the rich pay at a rate 12 times that required of the poor; he reorganised the courts on a more popular basis; and he arranged that the sons of those who had died in war for Athens should be brought up and educated at the government’s expense. The rich protested that his measures were outright confiscation; the radicals complained that he had not redistributed the land; but within a generation almost all agreed that his reforms had saved Athens from revolution. History’s lesson is that the moderates save the day. The extremists will always be pulling one way or another, but to yield to either is perilous.