All of what you said in your post applies to the US today or tomorrow. The conditions are exactly the same.
The Romans didn't have a democratic republic; only Roman citizens, from Rome, could vote. And only the Patricians could vote for Senators, an inbred class of degenerates you would have difficulty finding elsewhere today. (They liked to drink heated wine from lead goblets; get the picture?)
Women were never allowed to vote and treated as personal property.
Education of Patrician's children was from teachers who were slaves, usually Greek.
TAXES AND THE ROMAN MIDDLE CLASS
One fact that is rarely mentioned however, is that by the middle of the 1st century A.D. the majority of the Roman middle class had disappeared. They were taxed into oblivion.
The Roman Republic was built on the blood, sweat and courage of the Roman middle classes. These people were the bakers, small farmers, potters, merchants, building contractors, inn keepers, brick makers, stone cutters and others on whose efforts the Roman Republic's economy depended.
Since the Senate determined the taxes, wouldn't tax themselves and couldn't wring any money out of the poor, the only classes left to tax were the middle class businesses and professionals ( engineers, doctors, etc).
When the Republic died and the Empire came into existence, the need for tax revenue ballooned.
Entire families sold themselves into slavery to escape paying taxes. By the end of the 1st century they had pretty much disappeared.
For me, Rome collapsed due to the combination of three things: 1) the disappearance of the Roman middle class due to onerous taxation; 2) the maintenance of the status quo which resulted in the Roman government's stultification, its inability to accept change and evolve into a democratically elected Republic; and 3) education for ALL its citizens, thus making them all Romans who have a stake in its survival.
Rome had all the theoretical underpinnings to launch the industrial revolution, but they couldn't make those all important, necessary social changes.
The middle class of America is in much the same condition as the middle class of the Roman Empire. Our middle class is catching it from from sides. It is the middle class who largely support this nation. But, it is under attack.
This nation is undergoing great social changes. It has gone from a democratic republic to largely a socialist state. Even in this century, many socialist states have been born and died.
Books like The Third Wave purport to show evolution in our society when these great literary tombs were actually written to effect social change. These books were written by socialists whose aim was to destroy the old culture and bring about the neo-socialist culture based on economics.
Our culture has been under attack for many years now, and when the Soviets vowed to defeat us without firing a shot, they knew what they were talking about.