Wednesday, July 14, 2010

The Cost of Monarchy

Author Gareth Russell  discusses the question.
Lurid and inaccurate historical fantasies of the cost of running Versailles in the days before the French Revolution have convinced subsequent generations that monarchies are not just financially wasteful, but ruinously so. (That Versailles and the entire mechanism of the monarchy throughout the federalist structure of France accounted for less than 6% of the national budget in 1788 - admittedly grossly high by the standards of any other contemporary or subsequent monarchy - is a fact either unknown or wilfully overlooked.)
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4 comments:

Julygirl said...

...and who can even fathom the stratospheric amounts spent in running the Democratic Republic known as the United States of America.

Enbrethiliel said...

+JMJ+

And of course, those grossly inaccurate figures are being bandied about again so that people can feel justified in celebrating Bastille Day as a triumph of the ideals of fairness and justice!

Anonymous said...

The "expenses of monarchy" bit is all a nonsensical fabrication created by anti-monarchist fools in an effort to debunk the only decent form of government we've got, usually to gain power for themselves. I shall quote from the Monarchist Manifesto (available at swellanddandy.blogspot.com) on the cost of the British monarchy:

"Many will declare that monarchy is an unnecessary expense. However in 2003 Queen Elizabeth II’s funds totalled only £36.2 million, a 59% reduction since 1991-1992. It is estimated that the British monarchy costs taxpayers only 61 pence per person. However in 2000, the Queen gave the entire private profit of the Crown Estate, £132.9 million, to the Exchequer for the benefit of tax payers. This far exceeds the total cost of monarchy."

The monarchy pays for itself and then some. I could go on with the estimated cost of abolishing the monarchy, but I'll leave that for another time. Cheers.

P.

Gareth Russell said...

Thank you for the link!