Is this like everyone has the right for a bank account?
In Germany public libraries have free internet access, I rarely see people there though (and in libraries in general, they have the most expensive magazines to read for free!)
In Germany public libraries have free internet access, I rarely see people there though (and in libraries in general, they have the most expensive magazines to read for free!)
Unless you work at a library, you're only seeing who's there when you are - not very indicative of how often they're actually used, I would say.
...and somehow, I'm not at all sure what that has to do with a New York City law requiring ISPs to sell Internet access for people's homes at a price of $15 monthly -- regardless of where in the world a public library might be.
If the reasoning is, ISP need to be %15, so everyone has convenient internet, that argument makes sense.
Why not $15 Internet access to use while at home, and free Internet access to use while at the library?
What part of this potential eventuality "does not make sense"?
Each state has a parliament ("Parlament"), a governour ("Ministerpräsident") and secretaries of state ("Minister"). Some states have a constitution (like Bavaria) and a supreme court (similar to states supreme courts in the US).
One difference for example, VAT is a federal rate, but both states and the federal system get money from it.
One difference that is always striking to me, judges in Germany are not elected, neither are the police, like sheriffs. There is not jail/prison difference.
The German "constitution" and setup (e.g. Germany has a Supreme Court, but not set by the president, and a "senate" and a "congress") was heavily inspired by the US system (e.g. compared to the French or British system) - the other driving force was a fear of a re-rise of the nazis. So some things got overfederalized, for example every state has it's own internal intellegence service (which hinders work a lot, but prevents a take-over of internal intellignce).
Some states are "pre-WW1", like Bavaria, most are not (only 4-5 out of 27 are). I live in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern which was several states and parts of Prussia "pre-WW1".
Eastern Germany had no states (for most of the time), so those states came into existence with reunification.
The UK started electing the head of the police service for each county, and it just becomes a politicized popularity contest with anaemic voter turnout, rather than having a competent person take the position.
At least we don't elect judges, which has an even worse effect of politicizing those tasked with interpreting and enforcing the laws concocted by politicians.