"There was, after all, something irresistible in solving money problems simply by printing money..." page 114 of The First Family: Terror, Extortion, Revenge, Murder, and The Birth of the American Mafia by Mike Dash.
Out of Money & Options
The Sicilian Mafia was born out of serfdom because the Barons who ran the estates paid the Serfs almost nothing, sharing little of the prosperity the Serfs had produced from their land. Page 41 of Mike Dash's book reprints a police officer's letter from Sicily from 1860 illustrating the injustice:
"it hurts to see some of the scenes you come across when you live here like I do. One hot day in July...I was on a long march with my men. We stopped for a rest by a farmyard where they were dividing the grain harvest. I went in to ask for some water. The measuring had just finished, and the peasant had been left with no more than a small mound. Everything else had gone to his boss. The peasant stood with his hands and chin planted on the long handle of a shovel. At first, as if stunned, he stared at his share. Then he looked at his wife and four or five small children, thinking that after a year of sweat and hardship all he had left to feed his family with was that heap of grain. He seemed like a man set in stone. Except that tear was gliding silently down from each eye."
I read in the paper a quote saying something to the effect of Americans don't want shared sacrifice (to solve our debt problems), they want shared prosperity. In the example above, I think the field hand would have been satisfied with enough grain to get his family through the winter. Is that shared prosperity? Sort of, but it's not like the field hand was asking for a $400,000 yacht or a $2 billion tax break. He was asking for the means to support his family. I think that's what we're all striving for today - enough to take care of the ones you love if you've worked & earned the right to have it.
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