Plato on Wealth and Poverty

Excerpt from Plato's Republic [Ed: TIP!] on the concepts of 'wealth' and 'poverty'.  Writing in dialog format.

I wonder whether you will agree with another remark which occurs to me.

What may that be?

There seem to be two causes of the deterioration of the arts.

What are they?

Wealth, I said, and poverty.

How do they act?

The process is as follows: When a potter becomes rich, will he, think you, any longer take the same pains with his art?

Certainly not.

He will grow more and more indolent and careless?

Very true.

And the result will be that he becomes a worse potter?

Yes; he greatly deteriorates.

But, on the other hand, if he has no money, and cannot provide himself tools or instruments, he will not work equally well himself, nor will he teach his sons or apprentices to work equally well.

Certainly not.

Then, under the influence either of poverty or of wealth, workmen and their work are equally liable to degenerate?

That is evident. 

Here, then, is a discovery of new evils, I said, against which the guardians will have to watch, or they will creep into the city unobserved.

What evils?

Wealth, I said, and poverty; the one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

Not ... too ... bad .... I'd say!   Too bad our disgraced morons in positions of authority today are not capable of perceiving and understanding this truth; that to us seems like an obvious and simple truthful observation made by Plato over 2,000 years ago now.

Here is the apostle Paul in his letter to the ecclesia of Christ Jesus in Rome a few centuries later providing perspective on these types of human perceptions and the associated actions on the part of those of the nations like the Greek writer Plato here:

"13 For not the listeners to law are just with God, but the doers of law shall be justified. 14 For whenever they of the nations that have no law, by nature may be doing that which the law demands, these, having no law, are a law to themselves, 15 who are displaying the action of the law written in their hearts, their conscience testifying together and their reckonings between one another, accusing or defending them, 16 in the day when God will be judging the hidden things of humanity, according to my evangel, through Jesus Christ."  Romans 2:13-16

Just being able to listen is not enough, you have to be given to understand too. Our disgraced blind morons who unfortunately occupy positions of authority at this time in the west cannot understand.

Plato on the Fiscal Limits of Government Penalties and Fines c. 360BC

Excerpt from Plato's "Laws" below where he is writing in dialog format about the point at which economic policy should trump jurisprudence in the levying of "penalties" or what we may call "fines" or "fees" or even "taxes" today:

Touching the exaction of penalties, when a man appears to have done anything which deserves a fine, he shall pay the fine, if he have anything in excess of the lot which is assigned to him; but more than that he shall not pay.  And to secure exactness, let the guardians of the law refer to the registers, and inform the judges of the precise truth, in order that none of the lots may go uncultivated for want of money. But if any one seems to deserve a greater penalty, let him undergo a long and public imprisonment and be dishonoured, unless some of his friends are willing to be surety for him, and liberate him by assisting him to pay the fine.

So we can see here, documentary evidence that the ancient Greeks were fully aware of how their fiscal policy of their 'nomisma' system, or what we call today a system of state currency, could effect economic output.

In this paragraph, Plato is warning that if penalties or fines were called for due to some sort of transgression by an individual, the amount should be limited to only amounts that the transgressor possessed beyond "the lot assigned to him" but no more than that; and futher, the various government officials should take extreme care to make sure that adequate balances should remain in the non-government sector so as to not negatively effect output.

Plato's concern with a fine that would exceed this amount is due to his concern about a corresponding fall in local output "for a want of money" or in half Greek, I would assume "for a want of nomisma".

Fining the transgressor a punitive amount that would render deficient the amount of state currency or "nomisma" in the non-govenment sector required to maintain previous achieved levels of economic output was to be strictly avoided.

Too bad our disgraced morons running fiscal policy today in the west don't know what our Greek ancestors already knew well over 2,000 years ago.