One of the things about America that really blows my European mind: different laws for the each state.
In the state x you’re not aloud to turn right on green traffic light; in the state y you don’t need license for carrying a concealed weapon.
I have no doubt my question is childish and naive, but how do you cope with that? Do you know different sets of laws for each state? What if you need to travel 500 miles to visit your uncle in Idaho? Could you ever play the “sorry officer, I didn’t know” card? Would it be better if all the laws/jurisdictions were unified on a federal level?
For most everyday things, people are generally aware regarding what kinds of laws might differ. And there’s usually a default. If you aren’t sure about the right-on-red law in the next state you drive in, you can either double-check before you drive or you just don’t turn right on red until you see someone else doing it.
For all we hear about the gun-loving United States, the proportion of gun-owners in this country is the lowest it has been in decades. Those who do own guns are likely to be gun enthusiasts and are very likely to be very aware of differing gun laws in differing states.
For things like differing alcohol laws or marijuana laws or underage sex laws, most of the time you’ll be generally aware that this kind of thing is likely to be different.
For a lot of things—like small differences in liability for traffic accidents or contract formation or whatever—it really effects only a tiny number of people who actually get into trouble. People who aren’t affected aren’t really going to be motivated to care about or to ensure that laws are absolutely uniform across the country.
Better? In some ways, I suppose. But I don’t think that this usually results in huge problems for the average person. And it does have its advantages.
Generally, national businesses are supportive of uniform state laws in a lot of areas and there is an influential organization—the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws—that drafts Uniform Laws and lobbies state legislatures to enact them. They are generally popular and although they are never passed in exactly the same form, the difference are such that people get by without huge problems.
On the other hand, there are a lot of people who are against excessive uniformity, because then if they don’t like a particular version of a law, they can make sure that things that they do are subject to the laws of a state where they like their version of the law.
And there are a lot of areas of the law that are entirely or almost entirely federalized—antitrust law, copyright law, patent law, securities law, banking law, etc.
Heck, we even have one state—Louisiana—that doesn’t follow the Anglo-American tradition of Common Law at all; its law is based on the Napoleonic Code. Louisiana doesn’t even have the Uniform Commercial Code. I have never heard that this is a problem for very many people.
In all fairness, it’s the same way in Canada. Provinces are responsible for things like health care, traffic laws, alcohol laws, provincial taxation, movie ratings, emissions laws, utility rates, and on and on.
Actually, the way to create the biggest difference between the popular vote and the electoral college vote in an election is not to win just the bigger states but to win just the smaller states. The population of the smallest 40 (of the states and D.C.) is less than 44% of the total population of the U.S., although their electoral votes come to more than half of all the electoral votes. Suppose in each of them you win by exactly one vote. Suppose you don’t get a single vote in the 10 largest states, which have more than 56% of the population. Then you can win the electoral college vote even though you get less than 22% of the popular vote.
The U.S. has 51 states (counting D.C.) and a population of 381.9 million. The E.U. has 28 countries and a population of 505.7 million. So if you consider the countries of the E.U. to be equivalent to the states of the U.S., the U.S. has almost twice as many jurisdictions as the E.U., but the E.U.'s population is more than 58% greater than the U.S.
Yes, this is a fundamental characteristic of any election with multiple districts (states, whatever) and first past the post, because all you need is a plurality of a majority. A party can win a majority in the Canadian House of Commons with only around 25% of the vote.
Yes, but you have to remember that they’re anointing a God-King, not electing an official; he’s solely responsible for the very integrity and fertility of the land, and if he fails in his duties he may be sacrificed so that his blood may cleanse the very Earth he has failed. It’s why nobody bothers assassinating the British PM - well, apart from Spenser Perceval - you might as well murder the chairman of the Drainage Board.
The US has 50 states, because DC is not considered a state by any relevant authority. Also, your figure for the US population misplaced a digit: it is 318.9 million, not 381.9 million. But I don’t think this changes your general point.
At the risk of continuing this potential derailment into a discussion of U.S. politics, I just wanted to say that I’m forty years old, and I still don’t understand why the electoral college is operated the way that I think it’s operated:
The way that I think the electoral college is operated (and any more well-informed Doper, please feel free to fight my ignorance), whichever candidate wins the raw popular vote in a state is assigned one hundred percent of the electoral votes for that state. Like winner take all. To me, that’s wrong. I feel as though whoever wins the popular vote for a given district should get the electoral vote for that district, and only that district. If Georgia’s 4th electoral district votes for Candidate A, and Georgia’s 5th electoral district votes for Candidate B, the 5th district shouldn’t be compelled to vote for Candidate A just because the 4th district has more people in it.
This may not count since the lady in question ended up in a psychiatric ward before being sent home (really), but I knew a South African woman in Bangkok about 20 years ago who was gobsmacked to learn that there was stuff in the US more than a century old. Honest. She thought EVERYTHING in America was only 100 years old at best. I’m not sure she ever fully believed us when we assured her that was not true.
My point was that the U.S. has 51 jurisdictions. You’re right that I put down 381.9 instead of 318.9. 505.9 is a little more than 58% larger than 318.9.
If we’re going to discuss whether the electoral college is a good or bad idea, that is really something for a separate thread in Great Debates.
I was surprised by that too. I thought we’d practically invented 24/7 shopping.
I was surprised, for example, when I went to a “24 hour” Tesco to find it closed quite early, at around 5:00 PM. I wondered if perhaps 24 hours meant something else, like it was calculated on a weekly basis, but eventually I found the opening hours and it was only open 24/6, with limited hours on Sunday. (I’ve since learned that the UK, or at least England (I think Sunday shopping was one of the points in favor of Scottish superiority in one of the recent marathon threads), Sunday shopping is restricted.)
A good number of Americans don’t know anything about our Independence Day except that it’s a holiday with fireworks.
Or every other network when Bush was President. Or the movie that depicted the assassination of Bush and Tony Blair. Or the novel about someone assassinating Bush. Or Air America’s daily call for the assassination of Bush.
Then logically, from your premises, you should encourage it.
Travel outside of the US is alot more expensive – we can pretty much go to Canada or Mexico, but going to Europe take a lot of money that most can’t afford.
Well, first it looks like shit. Second, don’t other countries sell replicas of their sports jerseys for fans to buy? And there have been cases where sports venues have been named for local corporations – such as Heinz Field here in Pittsburgh. So local connections can count for something.
You’ve never heard of the “designated driver”?
And I like hearing the national anthem before a game. Well, depending on the singer. (The Pittsburgh Penguins’ singer is awesome) And I like it the NHL because you sometimes get the chance to hear “O’Canada”, which I like.
Thats interesting. My perception growing up of European cars was that French, British, and most low end Italian cars are shit. And lets not forget the Yugo clusterfuck. I even worked as a car salesman in the early 90s, and my trainer told me the Alfa-Romeo, Peugeot, Jaguar cars we sold at the dealership overpriced pieces of shit, while of course we sold shitty Chevrolets as well but those were OK because they were made in America.
We have an interesting dichotomy in America as I was growing up: I think almost every American would agree, even if begrudgingly, that Japanese cars were the most reliable, but for many especially old-timer or conservative or pro-Union Americans to buy one was un-American. Even the sales trainer from above lamented selling Toyotas at our dealership because he fought the Japanese in WW2! “Rice-Burners” we’d call 'em.
Now that most of the American public has learned that many “Japanese” cars are made in America, and many “American” cars are made in Mexico or import parts, attitudes I think have changed to the point where it’s rarely an issue at least where I am from (I dont live in Michigan).
“Rice-Burners” we’d call 'em.