Financing a Navy

I wonder when Victor Davis Hanson, a classical Greek scholar will relate how the Athenians and other Hellenes financed their war machines?

“The Trireme (Greek triremes) was the “state of the art” fighting ship designed to be able to cover long distances quickly under oar and sail, and in battle to ram enemy ships with devastating effect.”

The Trireme is about the same as an aircraft carrier and support. If you buy the navy ship building lobby’s line.

For the Athenians “money from the new vein of silver in Laurion enabled Athens to buy timber from Italy to increase her fleet from 40 in 489 BC to 200 in 480. The polis paid for the ship and its crew: equipment and repairs were paid for by a rich citizen as one of the liturgies (trierarchia – a brilliant Athenian notion which shamed the richest citizens into spending their wealth on the city, without the need for taxation). A full-scale replica of a trireme was launched in 1987…………”

So why don’t we apply a “trierachia” to all the companies making money on the oil and Pacific rim trade?

Why use payroll tax surpluses?