Most un-PC Belief?

[Neil]

How about property?
People without property cannot vote.

The housing business would explode.

See, but that's a bad thing.  You want to reduce the value of people's houses, not increase it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I don't think that education policy should be built around the rare parents who are not fundamentalists and are extremely hard-working and decide to home school their children.  I know from personal experience that some children are cheated out of a real education by their apeshit parents.

Yup, we're in 100% agreement here. I also think homeschooling should be banned. I've made this argument in many other places, and immediately you hear a story about a parent with a 20-year history as a teacher who also hires tutors for subjects they don't know very well and also makes sure the kid gets ton of extracurricular activities with other kids etc etc. I don't know that there are any numbers on this, but I'd bet off hand this is the exception to the rule. All of the parents I've known who have home schooled their children have either:

1. Had disaster kids who are extreme behavior problems and were never going to graduate public school.
2. Been religious ultra fundamentalists who wanted to make sure their kids were never exposed to "dangerous ideas" in public schools.
3. Been incompetent coddlers that think their fabrege egg children would shatter if exposed to the cruelty of public school.

I don't think policy should allow for any of those, and I'm quite fine in just saying no home schooling in order to prevent it. Societal policy should not be set based on the exceptions to the rule, but the actual reality for the majority of home schooled children.

I also think there are many private schools that should be abolished as many of them are just worthless. The Catholic run schools are generally good, as are a few of the better known non-Catholic private schools, but there's a ton of private schools that are barely schools at all and many of those need to be abolished.

[OttoVonBismarck]

So, what, like New York City would have about as much electoral power as Iowa?

I'd never advocate a property requirement for general voting, but I'd be perfectly fine with property tax levies being something that only property owners in the tax district can vote on. In general when the States used to have a property requirement to voting, they had clauses that allowed people with significant assets who didn't happen to own real estate to vote as well. So New York City wouldn't be afflicted the way you might think.

[Admiral Yi]

I imagine you'd end up with some very low property tax rates.

[OttoVonBismarck]

I imagine you'd end up with some very low property tax rates.

Not necessarily. I know of several communities where basically only rich people live that have through the roof millage rates.

[Josquius]

The exceptions for those who don't own property would have to be pretty huge these days I'd imagine. Loads of people, even rather rich ones, choose to rent rather than buy.

Also...I'm unsure on this but aren't the laws about owning an apartment a bit different to owning a house? It technically being a very long lease or somesuch since you don't actually own the land.

I guess there could be a market for buying worthless tracts of land you've no intention of ever visiting in order to get the vote. Which would not be good for the countryside....

[Viking]

How about property?
People without property cannot vote.

The housing business would explode.

Does this include property that your right hand possesses?

[LaCroix]

"homeschool" was how i managed to drop out of 7th and 9th grade

[Capetan Mihali]

Also...I'm unsure on this but aren't the laws about owning an apartment a bit different to owning a house? It technically being a very long lease or somesuch since you don't actually own the land.

I think that is a British thing; I remember Brazen mentioning something about it.  It's definitely not the case in the US, though, as far as I know.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The British have a lot of really long duration leases, that are much more common than in the United States. For example you might build a house on land you lease for 99 years. We do have some of that in the United States, it's just much more common to not do it. My extended family actually (originally my great-grandfather, then grand-father, then/now my uncle) has a 400 acre farm that was built and operated on leased land, it was owned by a timber company literally since the 1800s. The timber company was never interested in selling it completely but my family was able to lease it on a very long term lease back in the 1940s--and it's still in the family. Since the farming operations precludes much forest growth as long as they keep the lease the land won't have much value as a timber operation anytime in the future--but the timber company has put some gas wells on the property and it gets 100% of the royalties, my family as leaseholders have no right to it. Although I still wonder why they didn't just sell the land ages ago but retain the mineral rights (not an uncommon scenario.)

But apartments/condos are a different thing altogether. A condo is basically you buying the right to what they call in the real estate business a "box of air" and you own everything that is in it, and you have a right to occupy that "box of air." But the land itself is typically owned collectively by the condo association. In theory your condo could be torn down and you required to move, but that would be a scenario in which the condo association in total would have had to have voted for a sale of the land and you'd be probably well compensated for it.

That's a condo. A co-op is different, a building that has a co-op, you don't actually own any physical real estate. Instead you own a "share" of the co-op, and the "share" entitles you to residency rights in a unit of the co-op. Most condos and co-ops are designed to be perpetual, but in most States they could ultimately be dissolved and the property in total sold off--but it'd have to be a decision the co-op or condo voted on collectively. But it'd be majority rules, so some people who might not want to move may be forced to accept the terms of a buyout. This varies though, in some states it's not so easy to get people out that way, even if a majority of the association wants to sell lock, stock, and barrel.

[CountDeMoney]

Condos are great real estate options for people like me;  a single income family that doesnt want to go through all the bullshit of marriage for the sake of a second income in order to buy a fucking stand-alone home.

And I pay for Mexicans to mow my lawn, so I dont have to do it.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah, I think condos get an undeserved bad rap by a lot of people. The biggest issue a lot of people have with them are the association fees. But, those are really no different from the costs of maintaining a single family home. Except with a single family home you might need to suddenly do $30,000 in repairs when your entire roof needs replaced whereas the condo if you've got the fee structure correct and the reserve fund properly funded you're making a relatively predictable monthly payment. Although I have heard horror stories about "special assessments" in condos that have kept their fees artificially low for years and years and then have to suffer a reckoning when a big expense comes up and the reserve fund has no money to pay for it.

In exchange for having to pay the monthly fee (which again, isn't  materially much different from the non-mortgage costs of any home), you also get a lot of stuff included that homeowners have to contract for separately (maintenance of some parts of the building, lawn care etc.)

Oh, and the condos that allow the units to be rented out can sometimes take a turn for the worse if a lot of the unit owners are land lords and they rent out to trashy tenants. That's also a risk with any residential neighborhood though, where a land lord might rent out to undesirables.

[Capetan Mihali]

Oh, and the condos that allow the units to be rented out can sometimes take a turn for the worse if a lot of the unit owners are land lords and they rent out to trashy tenants.

[crazy canuck]

So, what, like New York City would have about as much electoral power as Iowa?

I'd never advocate a property requirement for general voting, but I'd be perfectly fine with property tax levies being something that only property owners in the tax district can vote on. In general when the States used to have a property requirement to voting, they had clauses that allowed people with significant assets who didn't happen to own real estate to vote as well. So New York City wouldn't be afflicted the way you might think.

In Vancouver and iirc all other municipalities in BC all non resident business owners get to vote in municipal elections.  If they are also residents they dont get to vote twice. 

[CountDeMoney]

Oh, and the condos that allow the units to be rented out can sometimes take a turn for the worse if a lot of the unit owners are land lords and they rent out to trashy tenants.

  No shit. I've been dealing with that bullshit beneath me for 6 years now.