German Chancellor Otto Von Bismarck may be most famous for his military and diplomatic talent, but his legacy includes many of today’’s social insurance programs. During the middle of the 19th century, Germany, along with other European nations, experienced an unprecedented rash of workplace deaths and accidents as a result of growing industrialization. Motivated in part by Christian compassion for the helpless as well as a practical political impulse to undercut the support of the socialist labor movement, Chancellor Bismarck created the world’’s first workers’’ compensation law in 1884. By 1908, the United States was the only industrial nation in the world that lacked workers’’ compensation insurance. America’’s injured workers could sue for damages in a court of law, but they still faced a number of tough legal barriers. For example, employees had to prove that their injuries directly resulted from employer negligence and that they themselves were ignorant about potential hazards in the workplace. The first state workers’’ compensation law in this country passed in 1911, and the program soon spread throughout the nation. After World War II, benefit payments to American workers did not keep up with the cost of living. In fact, real benefit levels were lower in the 1970s than they were in the 1940s, and in most states the maximum benefit was below the poverty level for a family of four. In 1970, President Richard Nixon set up a national commission to study the problems of workers’’ compensation. Two years later, the commission issued 19 key recommendations, including one that called for increasing compensation benefit levels to 100% of the states’’ average weekly wages. In fact, the average compensation benefit in America has climbed from 55% of the states’’ average weekly wages in 1972 to 97% today. But as most studies show, every 10% increase in compensation benefits results in a 5% increase in the numbers of workers who file for claims. And with so much more money floating in the workers’’ compensation system, it’’s not surprising that doctors and lawyers have helped themselves to a large slice of the growing pie. The author ends the passage with the implication that________.
A. compensation benefits in America are soaring to new heights
B. the workers are not the only ones to benefit from the compensation system
C. people from all walks of life can benefit from the compensation system
D. money floating the compensation system is a huge drain on the U. S. economy
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Leibniz was a German philosopher who belonged to the Rationalist school of philosophers, to which also belonged Descartes and Spinoza. But Leibniz was not only a philosopher, he was also a considerable authority on law, a diplomat, a historian and an outstanding mathematician — as is proved by his discovery in 1676, independently of Newton, of the Differential Calculus. Leibniz was the son of a Professor of Philosophy of Leipzig University, who died when his son was only 6, but who left behind a fine collection of books which the young Leibniz read eagerly. Leibniz studied law at the University, and then, while in the service of the Elector of Mainz, he visited Paris and London and became acquainted with the learned men of his time. When he was 30 he became official librarian of the Brunswich family at Hanover, where he remained till he died. His philosophy is set out in a short paper, The Mondadology, which he wrote two years before his death. Otherwise, except for one or two famous essays, his philosophical and scientific ideas have had to be assembled from his various papers and letters which, fortunately, have survived. They show Leibniz’’s brilliant intellect, especially in his attempt to relate mathematics and logic so that problems of philosophy could be exactly calculated and no longer be under dispute. He held that everything from a table to man’’s soul, and even to God himself, is made up of "monads" atoms, each of which is a simple, indivisible, imperishable unit, different from every other monad and constantly changing.George Berkeley Berkeley was born of an aristocratic Irish family and educated at Trinity College, Dublin, where he remained as fellow and tutor. All his best work was written very early, and by the age of 27 he had made a reputation as a writer on philosophy. In 1712 Berkeley went to London and associated with the literary men of the day, among whom he was warmly welcomed. Berkeley travelled widely in Italy and France, and then spent a few years in the English colonies of North America and the West Indians, where he had hoped to found a missionary college. When his hope failed, he returned to Ireland, and in 1734 was appointed Bishop of Cloyne. He spent 18 years administrating his diocese, living a happy family life with his wife and children, and writing books on both philosophical and practical subject. In 1752 he retired to Oxford, where he died the next year at the age of 68. Berkeley’’s claim to fame rests on his philosophy. His views are in contrast, deliberately, to those of John Locke. As an idealist he believes that mind comes before matter, while a Materialist holds everything depends upon matter. Beyond his strictly philosophical works, Berkeley was interested in natural science and mathematics. He wrote an Essay towards a New Theory of Vision, in which he attempted to explain how we are able to judge the distance of objects from us. Though science has made great advances since Berkeley’’s day, his essay is still of value.David Hume Hume is a celebrated Scottish philosopher and historian. In 1739, after a period of study in Paris, when he was only 28, he published one of the most influential books of English philosophy of modern times — the Treatise of Human Nature. It excited little interest, however, when it first, appeared, and Hume turned to writing admirable essays on a variety of topics. In 1752 he returned to Edinburgh as librarian of Advocates’’ Library, and began to compose A History of England, the final volume of which was published in 1761. From 1761 to 1765, he was secretary to the British Embassy in Paris; where he was sought after by the cultured society. For the rest of his life he lived in his native Edinburgh, the central figure of a distinguished group of writers.Hume’’s chief fame as a philosopher rests on the strict and logical way in which he applied the principle of John Locke, that all thought is built up from simple and separate elements, which Hume calls impressions. He believed that even a human being is a bundle of different perceptions, and has no permanent identity. His criticism of man’’s belief that everything has a cause seemed to deny what we assume, not merely from ordinary experience, but from a scientific knowledge; and since he wrote, philosophers have been trying to find answers to his penetrating doubts. Indeed he has had more influence upon recent discussion in England about the principles of knowledge than any other philosopher of the past. Who came from a noble family
A. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
B. George Berkeley
C. David Hume