These quotes are extremely misleading.
The quotes about free grain to citizens increasing people moving to Rome, while true, applies to the late Republic and early Empire. I could be wrong, but I think there was little or no “dole” in the middle to later empire, when the mob in the city of Rome was largely politically irrelevant.
By this time the emperors spent little time in Rome itself, so why should they care whether the inhabitants were calm or not? Also, by the time the Empire reached its full size, the inhabitants of Rome the city were a teeny percentage of the whole population, and free food for all of Rome the city could have been only a minor burden to the whole empire.
In the middle and later empire, the money went almost entirely to support the armies, and of coumrse to provide wealth to the emperor and his cronies. I have seen little or no evidence that there was any large group of welfare drones supported by public funds after perhaps 100 AD.
At best, the quotes above telescope events that took place over 400 to 500 years into a sequence that makes it look like they took place over a few decades and “caused the fall of Rome.”
We don’t think of events from the time of Shakespeare to today in the same A directly caused B way, so we should not telescope historical events over a similar timespan in the past into a cause-effect relationship.
I am making no implication that the dole in and of itself was the cause of the decline and fall of Rome and anyone who knows the history is aware that the seeds were planted centuries before it fell: encouraging dependency, confiscating production, debasing the currency and the government reacting to the resultant ill-effects by insinuating itself even further into the economy.
The entire point of the OP is to consider the similarities to today, including the barbarians waiting to feast on our bones and entrails. And I maintain there are many which are equally dangerous — not only to America’s future, but to the future of Western Civilization itself.
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Okay, a little research showed that I’m wrong about how long the annona lasted. It apparently kept going and even expanded into the middle/late empire.
However, I hold to my other two main claims, that given the small percentage that the inhabitants of Rome itself (and perhaps also later of Constantinople) were of the empire as a whole, free food for them could not have been a huge fiscal burden, and that the army and corruption consumed a MUCH larger percentage of the budget.
Think of it this way. If our national welfare rolls were limited to the poor of DC or NYC, how much of a burden would it be? Not much.
Free food for Rome just wasn’t a big cause of the collapse of the empire. Civil wars and the cost of the army had a LOT more to do with it.