Stolen from Working Class History:
On this day, 1 August 1834, slavery in the British Caribbean officially ended, and the 800,000 enslaved people owned by Britons were "freed". However the government compensated the former owners, at taxpayers' expense, for the loss of their "property": paying them £20 million at the time. This sum constituted 40% of the total government budget that year, and was the largest ever state bailout until the 2009 bank bailout. The debt incurred was only eventually paid off in 2015. Formerly enslaved people were also forced to work unpaid for 45 hours every week for their former masters for four years. Often this is referred to as the date the British Empire abolished slavery, but in fact the institution continued in other colonies for many years. Pictured: Illustration of the brutality of slavery by Isaac Cruikshank, 1792
i n c r e m e n t a l i s m
freed slaves were still slaves for 4 years, pretty bullshit
the government could even have employed them in some public works jobs and used the new once taxes to pay off the debt from the bailout; smh not even baseline fiscally responsible
Has any oligarchy ever been fiscally responsible?
the fiscally responsible thing was a bit, but honestly probably not
unless you count feudal systems hording their tithes because gold looked pretty fiscally responsible (they just let their wealth grow!)