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Four Ways to Fire a Frenchman | 41 comments (41 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Re: Aaaargh (none / 0)
American law is meant for corporations to sue to protect their hard earned money from unfair taxation, not for uppity workers to sue for hard earned corporate money...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Tue Mar 28th, 2006 at 04:59:37 AM EST
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Re: Aaaargh (none / 0)
It also guarantees trial by jury whenever the dispute is worth at least $20. Smart as the Founding Fathers were, they either did not expect the constitution to last, or did not know about inflation.

They could have said something sensible such as "an average workman's weekly wages" or something of the sort...

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 28th, 2006 at 05:22:27 AM EST
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Re: Aaaargh (none / 0)
To know "an average workman's weekly wages" demands access to statistics that are easily available in a country were almost all wages are taxed and noted in computerised records, but no so easily available in a country were that is not the case.

By the way, they probably could not foresee inflation in the way it exists today. Why would you have permanent inflation unless you print a lot of papermoney to cover the costs of a war? Which they had just done, making everybody convinced that metalmoney was the way of the future.

Coincidentally, the swedish voting law from 1866 contained economical barriers towards voting for the parliament. Fortunately they put them in exact numbers. Inflation meant more and more voters until liberals and socialists could win on a universal and equal suffrage platform.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Mar 28th, 2006 at 07:44:51 AM EST
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Re: Aaaargh (none / 0)
Not coincidentally: property or income requirements for voting rights were de rigueur throughout Europe in the 19th Century.

A society committed to the notion that government is always bad will have bad government. And it doesn't have to be that way. — Paul Krugman
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Mar 28th, 2006 at 07:53:31 AM EST
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Re: Aaaargh (none / 0)
Yes, but IIRC the Preussian voting laws were not set to fixed sums but to percentage of the population that earned or owned that much.

So the coincidental thing was the probably unforseen consequences of making a fixed sum a limit, in the US leading to all cases tried by jury and in Sweden to universal suffrage. Of course both these developments could have been halted, but they had the inertia of the established.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Tue Mar 28th, 2006 at 08:25:49 AM EST
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Four Ways to Fire a Frenchman | 41 comments (41 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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