What Else We Could Do With That Money!

A common political meme, "Lots of money is going to waste doing x. Think of all the better things we [some collective 'we'] could do with that money!"

This kind of thing seems to have evolved to support taxation of those frivolous activities by various states representing that collective we.

I thought of this recently whist reading TUDORS, a recent popular history of the English dynasty of that name written by Peter Ackroyd.

When Ackroyd is telling us about the despoliation of the Catholic monasteries by Henry VIII pursuant to his (Henry's) dispute with Rome, he reminds me that this meme is an old one. The monastic life was considered one of the frivolous activities that meme would have 'us' target, as was the veneration of saints, etc. How did it work out?

Ackroyd (pictured above) writes thus: "It had previously been proposed that the dissolution of the monasteries was for the higher good for the nation. The incomes of the various priories would be spent on colleges and hospitals and schools 'whereby God's work might the better be set forth, children brought up in learning, clerks nourished in the universities, old servants decayed to have livings. almshouses for poor folk to be sustained in, readers of Greek, Hebrew and Latin to have good stipends,, daily alms to be ministered, mending of highways....' It never happened. The only deity worshipped was that of Mammon."

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