Between 100 and 127 AD, the ancient Roman satirical poet Juvenal wrote a collection of five books comprising 16 satirical poems, each a scathing critique of the rampant corruption within the Roman Empire, known as “The Satires”. In Satire X, Juvenal wrote:
“Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the/ bribes; the mob/ That used to grant power, high office, the/ legions, everything/ Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for/ two things only, Bread and circuses.”
Juvenal’s writing evokes nostalgia for days when Romans upheld an imperfect democracy. Before the reign of Rome’s emperors, citizens elected representatives. He cynically concludes that Roman citizens, while once a civically engaged people, had become nothing more than an angry mob with a voracious craving for violent, bloody spectacle. He also identified one of the government’s most effective tools for maintaining power: appeasing its citizens with superficial entertainment and just enough food to get by. Provisioning bread and circuses to the Roman people would ensure they remained complacent and ignorant of the corruption and inequality plaguing the empire. Bread and circuses — Panem et circenses in Latin — were a means of control.
Modern political thinkers equate Rome’s disastrous “bread and circuses” policies with the modern welfare state in America. The billions of dollars that the U.S. government spends on social safety net policies (such as retirement plans, medical services, and unemployment compensation) echo the Roman Empire’s provisioning of bread to the populace to keep them happy. The Empire aimed to quell widespread dissent and keep the masses satisfied by providing bread; the modern welfare state is a comprehensive effort to address systemic injustices, such as wealth inequality, and to enhance the social well-being of American citizens. Thus, the modern welfare state differs sharply from the bread and circuses of Rome, as the Romans had no intention of addressing societal maladies through these superficial policies. In contrast, the modern welfare state does aim to do precisely that.
While America differs from Rome in terms of “bread,” the “circuses” pervade. The NFL is a league worth over $228 billion, and the monetary value of individual teams continues to rise. The NBA is worth approximately $133 billion, with each team valued at an average of $4.4 billion. From 1970 to 2020, state and local governments allocated $33 billion to fund the construction of professional sports facilities in the U.S. In 2019, the concert and live entertainment industry had an economic impact of approximately $132.6 billion. Live Nation — the world’s leading live entertainment company — recently pledged to allocate $1 billion to renovate and enhance 18 live music venues across the U.S. The American Motion Picture Association estimates that the film industry in the U.S. pays a collective total of $229 billion in wages and supports 2.32 million jobs. Collider put the 2024 domestic U.S. box office value at $8.7 billion. The total estimated revenue of the U.S. Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry — encompassing films, television, music, live events, gaming, and other sectors — in 2024 was $649 billion. The International Trade Administration estimates that the industry will likely be worth $808 billion by 2028. In short, the U.S. entertainment industry has substantial financial backing.
Entertainment can keep a population distracted from important issues, such as inequality, discrimination, and climate change. Indeed, it is easier to get lost in the sensory experience of lights and noise at a concert than it is to consider and address fundamental societal problems that feel beyond one’s control. There is, however, a more insidious form of “bread and circuses” even more destructive to American society: the devious art of pitting the working class against each other through the instigation of culture wars.
This strategy is more sinister than simply ramping up state and private funding for giant spectacles that divert citizens’ attention away from the unscrupulous actions of big business and the federal government. It is a strategy designed to prevent mass revolt and widespread systemic change, something the American working class is sorely longing for, but something that the technocratic elite is endlessly fearful of, and actively trying to prevent. To prevent a necessary shakeup of the system, the elite teach Americans to hate each other. They teach whites to hate blacks, native-born to hate immigrants, men to hate women, poor to hate the middle-class, non-educated to hate the educated, Christians to hate Muslims, and other conflicts.
Inequality in the U.S. is crushing low-income citizens and is slowly eroding the middle class. According to data from the Congressional Budget Office, in 2022, families in the top decile of the U.S. income distribution — the top ten percent — held 60 percent of the nation’s wealth. Families in the top one percent held 27 percent of the nation’s wealth, and that number has risen to a little above 30 percent in the last three years. The share of the nation’s wealth held by citizens in the bottom 50 percent (not including future claims on social security benefits) sits at a depressingly measly three percent. Interestingly, the bottom 50 percent hold only one percent of all the wealth invested in the financial market, meaning they have disproportionately low access to highly lucrative, illiquid assets that wealthy capitalists generate exorbitant returns from. The Economic Policy Institute has released statistics on the unjust and egregious inequality in the U.S. For example, from 1979 to 2013, the real hourly wages of low-wage workers fell by five percent, while the wages of middle-wage workers rose by only six percent, and the salaries of very high-wage earners increased by 41 percent. This explosion of wealth inequality has led to an ever-more hegemonic, two-tiered society in America.
Herein lies a profoundly significant problem that has plagued the U.S. since its inception: a wealthy class that controls capital and the means of production, accruing an ever-growing share of the nation’s wealth. In contrast, the proletariat — those who work under the auspices of capitalism for wages to survive — struggle to procure basic needs. Bread and circuses merely serve to distract the oppressed from this problem.
Martha T. McCluskey, professor emerita at the University at Buffalo Law School, argues that significant ideological changes underway in the world of politics during the late 20th century spurred an escalation of culture wars. From the late 1970s onward, dominant American political beliefs shifted toward neoconservatism and neoliberalism and away from the egalitarian social policymaking that had characterized the post-war rise of the U.S. to global economic dominance. Indeed, the wealth gap during this period also began to widen significantly. McCluskey states that “By fueling the ‘culture wars,’ the right helps deflect the problem of ‘class warfare’ away from right-wing economic policies and onto egalitarian social policies.”
As citizens become increasingly persuaded by culture wars, the right’s ability to pass policies that will exacerbate inequality increases. The right has learned to mask fiscally elitist policies by claiming they are on the righteous side of a culture war. For example, the Trump administration has been using immigrants as scapegoats for policies that will boost the power of the capitalist class — those who control the means of production (capital) and employ labor — since he began his political tenure in 2016.
A study funded by the National Institute of Justice found that Texas Department of Public Safety officials arrest immigrants at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent crimes. Another study that examines a nationally representative sample of immigrants and native-born citizens found that incarceration rates for U.S. immigrants have been lower than those for native-born citizens for 150 years.
Now, Trump and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller are persistently fearmongering about “migrant criminals,” “illegal monsters,” “killers” and “gang members” who are “poisoning our country,” “taking our jobs” and orchestrating the “largest invasion in the history of our country.” The only reason the Trump administration harps on this issue so fervently is that it allows them to justify exacerbating the iniquitous class division to enrich themselves and their corporate friends.
The so-called Big, Beautiful Bill, which Trump signed into law on July 4, 2022, is likely to result in 11.8 million people losing their health coverage by 2034. It will also extend tax cuts for millionaires by cutting spending on healthcare, primarily Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. The Trump administration will take one trillion dollars from the poorest Americans and give it to the richest under this bill. Trump’s administration, however, has attempted to make this massive upward transfer of wealth more palatable by allocating $170 billion for immigration and border security, which, in the midst of an anti-immigrant craze, sounds appealing to many voters. It is a tragically unjust display of tyranny. The bill enjoys historically low popularity, but two-thirds of the public (64 percent) who don’t support the bill still disagree with each other over cultural issues.
American social activist and writer Kim Moody defines the working class in his book “On New Terrain” as those who “possess no means of production, must sell their labor power, work more hours than cover their wages, and work under the rule of capital…” He estimates that roughly 63 percent of employed workers constitute the working class as defined by this criterion. Other estimates find that approximately 60 percent of America’s labor force is working class, as they possess no college degree, and work mainly in service jobs (78 percent). The longer the working class remains divided against itself, the more the wealthiest percentage of Americans will be able to exploit and enjoy the generous treatment afforded by a federal government controlled by big business.
Politicians continue to pour gasoline on the fires of cultural tribalism to keep the public distracted from elitist policies that benefit the rich and harm the poor. They are offering citizens another version of “bread and circuses,” which keeps the masses satisfied by showing them where to direct their anger: away from the wealthy capitalist class and toward immigrants, black people, women, people of different religious backgrounds, etc. In an era when the richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has the potential to become the world’s first trillionaire, uniting the working class will be necessary to challenge the capitalists who perpetuate inequality in the U.S.
Acknowledgment: The ideas expressed in this article are those of the individual author.