In reading a book about Edward 1 written by Marc Morris published by Windmill books, London, UK , 2008. Edward I is also known as Longshanks in the movie Braveheart. In the book, among other topics is power struggles between the King and other feudal lords. At the time, most of the wealth was in a feudal system which a family accumulated lands (sometimes because of being friends with the Royals) and 95% of the people were serfs who worked the land for the lords. The lords were the members of the government and occasionally when a King lost a number of battles, the lords would set out to try to be King.

Among the tasks of King is stewardship of the country or how to defend it and keep it together of the income the country has. In times of peace, it is relatively easy,  but in times of war, King tend to overspend. In the case of Edward 1, for much of the time he was King he was at war with someone – Wales, Scotland, France and he went to the Holy Land. Wars are expensive, at the time of Edward 1 in the late 1200 and early 1300’s, the church owned lands – grew crops which meant to go to the Holy Lands the church could pay. To fight wars, Edward had to tax the population but it was really taxing the feudal lords who had to pay. Similar to everyone in history, people are willing to pay something but not a lot. Edward taxed the wool industry, but unless wool could be sold to Europeans, it had a maximum it could be taxed. Edward 1 took grain from the lords estates, however when they took the grain, what would the people do and how could the lords live? In Edward’s time the financiers to government’s were the Italians and Edward liked spending rather than saving money. He had to go to war to plunder someone’s assets. Eventually, people represented the taxes and the other things it represented and the movie Braveheart is one of the movies about people who were fed up with a lot of things including too high of taxes which did not benefit them.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, it is not a perfect world even if you have a monopoly to raise prices, to keep margins high, there is always a balance. If the prices go to high, people look to alternatives. If they begin to look for alternatives, then it will be very hard to get them back. Most people will pay the price because they need to, but they are always looking, maybe not always be doing, but looking for alternatives.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.