Hacker News Reader

HNHacker News

Top New Best Ask Show Jobs

Comment by dredmorbius | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

dredmorbius·

There's history here.

Note: sheriffs of London paid 300 £s per year, hoping to make a profit from the fines they collected.

A labourer's annual wages at the time were 2 £/yr.

A master carpenter might earn 20-40 £/yr, depending on days worked.

A kitchen servant, 2 - 4 shillings/yr.

In: "List of price of medieval items"

http://medieval.ucdavis.edu/120D/Money.html

View on HN

In ancient Rome, the right to collect taxes in some provinces was contracted out. If you won the contract, you had to provide Rome with at least the amount you bid for the contract, but anything you could manage to collect beyond that was yours to keep. And if people failed to pay their taxes to you, you often had the right to enslave them in order to collect.

Do you have any (quick, readily accessible) references on this?

Thanks.

Wikipedia is a decent starting place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publican

Hence why they were so despised at the time of the New Testament.

If anyone is interested in some of the roman dynamics of the time I highly recommend Paul Maier's historical fiction on Pontius Pilate: https://www.amazon.com/Pontius-Pilate-Paul-L-Maier/dp/082544.... (his book on Nero is great too)

Further, to progress beyond quaestor (tax collector) in Roman politics a politician had to put on public games and such to win popularity (as an aedile). Where did those funds come from? Yep, excess taxes collected.

It's not unlike winning friends and donors for campaign funds by playing nice with wealthy special interests as a modern politician in order to progress up the ladder to national office and then continue to win re-election.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com