Friday, August 25, 2006

I Thought We Were Supposed to Learn from History

It seems that the minimum wage and price controls were an issue even 4,000 years ago. Some people (liberals) never learn.

In Babylon some 4,000 years ago the Code of Hammurabi was a maze of price control regulations. "If a man hire a field-labourer, he shall give him eight gur of corn per annum"; "If a man hire a herdsman, he shall give him six gur of corn per annum"; "If a man hire a sixty-ton boat, he shall give a sixth part of a shekel of silver per diem for her hire." And on and on and on. Such laws "smothered economic progress in the empire for many centuries," as the historical record describes. Once these laws were laid down "there was a remarkable change in the fortunes of the people."
"If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience!" - George Bernard Shaw

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