schatoor

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Wow really. I honestly didn't knew that. Thanks for bringing be back to earth (or should I say Europe).

crazyeddie740

The reason the US isn't Proportional Representation is mainly because of states' rights. The individual state's representation in Congress and in the Electoral College are designed to be reflections of each state's relative power. There's a few things I would change (such as instant runoff elections instead first past the post, and letting strong minority candidates get a Electoral College vote or two instead of winner-take-all) but on the whole I'm happy with it. Speaking of the Electoral College:

I've been toying with an idea I've had for World Government. It's basically based on the United States system, with one change. Membership in this world government would be limited to multiparty democracies, ideally with some history of stability. The legislature would have two houses. One, the equivalent of the USA's Senate would have two "Senators" from each member state. These would be chosen however the individual member states decide: in US history, Senators were originally chosen by their state's legislature, then latter by the voters.

The other house would be like the House of Representatives, but with a twist. Instead of the amount of representation being based on population, it would be based on GDP. This is because I feel that GDP is a better reflection of a nation's power than population.

I would like the executive to be chosen by an Electoral College, but I'd be open to a Prime Minister. Any thoughts?

crazyeddie740

davholla: These renters are sitting on valuable property already. They can't sell it as long as they're only renters.

Firstly, the city could raise their rents to make profit off them and relax the rules about who could rent these properties, which would cause them to move out and let someone better heeled move in. However, this would raise a major stink, and might violate rent control laws. Also, government is never that good at business, and I shudder to think of them as proffessional landlords.

Secondly, the city could sell the properties out from under them. This would make an even bigger stink, and the city council would probably not get reelected.

Thirdly, the city could sell the properties to the current renters. However, these renters don't have very much money, and the rent isn't very much. So the selling price has to be fairly low. 1500 pounds (I have no idea how much that is in dollars, don't really care either :-)) might be a bit low, but better a low selling price than giving it away because of adverse possession.

Once the renters own the house, even if they don't sell it, it can still get out into the market: They could take a loan out on the house (which is good for the economy in itself), screw up, and the bank forecloses. Or they could die. Or they do actually decide to sell it.

Long story short, the "right to buy" is seems to me to be the best solution to a sticky problem. It's not fair, and it's a bad example to everybody's work ethic, but hopefully it will normalize the housing market so by the time your daughter want's to buy a house or rent, she can actually afford it.

For another spin on the whole "fair vs good idea" thing, consider this hypothetical situation:

Let's say that it's been proven that a certain program which treats convicts fairly well, three square meals a day, nice blankets, five year sentencing, and having them train puppies to be seeing eye dogs, drops recidivism rates to virtually nil. Same study proves that a twenty year sentence and, well, let's just say "takes their birthday away" causes even innocent people who were wrongfully convicted to "return" to a life of crime 95% of the time.

Which program would you be in favor of? Giving bad men a better time then they had on the streets, even if they don't deserve it?

davholla

Crazy Eddie,

The problem with the American (and UK) system is that a goverment can be elected with absolute power with 25% of the vote. Now I appreciate about state's rights but that is not fair nor is it a good system.

Regarding right to buy, the goverment could either sell the houses at a fair price rather than a discounted one. In most cases the buyers are English and don't forget most of us have an irrational desire to buy a house, whether it is a good investment or not !
Although I do see your points I just think that the damage done to the work ethic is too great
(BTW 1500 GBP = 2800 USD).