>Let them eat cake
What did she mean by this?
>>460333
From what I remember, the peasantry were starving from a lack of bread so she suggested to eat cake instead.
>>460370
makes sense
cake is more nutritious than bread
>>460384
Except that you only make cake if you can afford bread without a problem
>>460384
Apparently she never even said this. The phrase had been floating around for awhile and overtime was attributed to her.
>>460394
>You never bought a cake with your last money just for the historical irony of eating cake because you can't afford bread?
No. As I always have food stored for when I run out of money
And even then I would rather bake a cake, as that is even cheaper.
>>460333
I always thought it was meant to illustrate to what point she and some aristocrats at the top were so pampered and disconnected from the reality of the starving masses of millions being exploited under their rule. I can imagine a naive reading of history that finds in this psychologizing argument of a "lack of empathy with the masses," space for some kind of moral exculpation for the Queen, who wasn't "giving the orders," rather fucking the guy who gave them, but got hair head chopped off anyway.
And with good reason, in my opinon. I'm with the jacobins.
And so, the peasants ate cake. But it could never full the holes in their lives, and so they sought materialism for the rest of time.
And then they perished.
Democracy was a mistake
t. Roux
>>460400
>No. As I always have food stored for when I run out of money
Well I ensured that I was born as an Austrian Princess, so I don't even have to worry about that.
While she never said it, it was apparently a joke around regulations for bakers. The price of bread was legally fixed, so to prevent bakers from underproducing or using all their time and flour to make (more profitable) cakes they were required to sell cake and other deserts at the mandated price of bread.
>>460574
How did any economy run with bullshit like that
>>460673
I know this is gonna sound dumb but I heard that there's no evidence she said it either (on QI)
>>460694
I know, it's as if they hadn't even read Adam Smith.
>>460694
http://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/06/06/2014/let-them-eat-cake-wasnt-such-bad-idea
It still does
>So Marie’s [supposed] comment to let them eat brioche should be construed to mean, “let them consume market price carbohydrates,” or let them eat bread that has no price ceiling attached to its retail price. More elaborately, it should be construed to mean, “If there is no artificially cheap bread available, let them buy the next-cheapest bread, which is available at the still-reasonable market price.” And, further, that if there were no artificially cheap bread (a policy that predated Marie's presence in politics by decades) in the first place, bread would actually be more affordable for most people in France...
>Marie’s comment did not, then, show disdain for the poor. It showed disapproval for price supports and price ceilings, subsidies, and interventionist microeconomic activity by the state; a disapproval I share. Marie’s comment today might be something like, “If there are no government-subsidised Tesla Model S cars available, let them buy Audi S7s.” In the culinary category, it might be something like, “Oh, there’s no Coca-Cola available sweetened with government-subsidised high fructose corn syrup? Let them drink Mexican-made Coca-Cola sweetened with sugarcane.”
>Today, we do not limit the cost of a basic loaf of bread. We have replaced these price ceilings with more troubling interventionist policies, dubious in their effectiveness and opaque in their beneficiaries. The Americans have tariffs and price controls that encourage people to grow corn that will not be eaten, to destroy sugar rather than exporting it, to make olive oil in California, to purchase cigars from the Dominican Republic, to purchase pickup trucks made in Texas, to export watermelon, and even to buy calf leather from Wisconsin rather than Saskatchewan.
>implying government intervention is the problem
>implying it isn't a condition of possibility for capitalism to exist
