Grassroot people I need quick help with a question about empires

[Matthew Zak]

I've been searching, but I can't find what I'm looking for. My methods may be lacking, or I'm just tired to the point of being stupid. In any case, I need this information:

What are some major Empires that fell, and how long did they "rule" before that fall? Also, if you can find it, what % of their wealth did they spend on military, etc? I need to know how over-extended they became -- and the main theories as to why. I need this information because I'm drawing a comparison in the amount of shortsightedness we Americans generally suffer from. Whoever sees the video will at least THINK about it for a second, and that 'second' is a perfect window of opportunity to slip ron paul into their mind.

[Cleaner44]

At its height, Rome dominated 120 million citizens and subjects, nearly half the world’s entire population.

Its land area stretched across 2.5 million square miles, more than the total of all West and East European countries today (with the exception of Russia’s).

What caused its demise?

For the answer, Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has long been the bible of historians. Gibbon attributed Rome’s decline to the gradual weakening of its military — the outsourcing of its defense to questionable foreign mercenaries and the dilution of Roman martial virtues with the advent of Christianity.

But in recent years, historians, sociologists and economists have begun to recognize a series of closely linked economic factors that played a larger role in the empire’s decline than previously believed. And today in Rome, I saw some of the evidence ...

http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/weiss/2006/1016.html

[Matthew Zak]

Nice, thanks. :)