I am growing weary of those who compare the ancient Roman Empire to America. The facts just do not support the comparison on any but surface coincidences.
From its start, Rome was a culture that expanded its wealth and power by war and plunder. It absorbed its conquered foe, romanized their government and utilized the assets to support Roman society.
I know a comparison could be made with the infiltration of our businesses into almost every corner of the globe and the dispersal of our troops after WWII in many strategic locations, but we, as a nation, did not invade to confiscate land or plunder, rather we stayed only to restore and renovate and then turn over control back to the locals. Our dispersal of troops was the result of our defense of our ideology against the threat of communism.
Our system of a federal republic that attempted to assure a government of the people, by the people and for the people was created by men wanting to free themselves from tyranny.
Rome was the result of a growing oligarchy, needing land and wealth and using its military as a means to that end. The roman army was rarely used as a defensive force. The roman senate was an oligarchy that only represented the needs of that class, slaves being the main source of labor and free citizens having, originally, little impact on the decisions of government.
If anything, our citizen soldiers have far more in common with the Greek hoplite than a roman legionnaire.
The structure of the Roman Empire was an ever developing bureaucracy needed to keep the vast empire in coordination. In the end, it was the bureaucracy that was the last remnant of the empire that allowed Europe to continue its evolution after the slow death of the empire.
In America, it is the growth of a useless bureaucracy, whose purpose is to consolidate power into a smaller, more compact entity, (the federal government) away from the dispersed yet functioning states. This is the opposite of the direction taken by Rome.
As to the growing underclasses, it is true that both Rome and America created a large, unusable underclass, Rome by jobbing out the work to the citizens of their conquered states and the US by some misadventure in socialism and bleeding heart liberalism (add white guilt to that, noting that the romans felt no guilt about anything)
Trade was essential to both empires, but roman trade was curtailed by invading hordes from the east, requiring its client states to fend for themselves with less regularly maintained trade routes and the dispersal of power away from Rome/Ravenna to the outlying provincial capitals.
We are experiencing the opposite by the consolidation of power and control to DC and our decline in trade is due to decisions made by the federal government by trade agreements and tariffs.
The ultimate ends may be similar or not, but we are not Rome even though I could think of several emperors I could compare to Obama. Our military is not the brutish attack dog that was the roman legions, and there is very little about innate roman culture that would be comparable to us except for our affinity to trade and commerce and one heck of a large tax system.