Louis XIV, the “sun king” of France from 1643 to 1715, is often marveled over by historians for his “magnificence”. Buy like most rulers with their own cult of personality, he did far more harm than good to his people:
The economic and financial condition of France at the beginning of the eighteenth century was truly pitiable. In spite of her great natural resources, the variety of her favourable climates, the fertility of her well-watered soil, and the thrift, industry, and intelligence of her people, the efforts of able ministers like Mazarin and Colbert to increase her national wealth had been rendered nugatory by the senseless politics of the Great Monarch. Costly campaigns abroad, ruinous extravagance at home, left the kingdom at his death, in 1715, with a debt of 3460 million francs, of which over 3300 had been contracted since the death of Colbert in 1683. His murderous wars, reducing the birth-rate, increasing the mortality, and “an act of religious intolerance, disavowed by religion” –the expulsion of the Protestants–had reduced the population by four millions, or 20 per cent, since 1660. Agricultural products had fallen off by one-third since he ascended the throne.
The Physiocrats, Henry Higgs, p. 5

This is what centralization of power around a few egos leads to: “costly campaigns abroad” (like those brought to us by today’s neocons), ruinous extravagence at home (like that brought to us by today’s “compassionate conservatives” and tax-and-spend leftists), and massive debt (like that brought to us by the combination of all of the above).