quote: Plots of 800 and 900 square metres (8,611 to 9,687 square feet) are up for grabs at Rappottenstein, near the Czech border, to both singles and married couples who pledge to have at least one child in the next 10 years.
What happens if the couple turns out to be infertile? Do they have to pay for the land, then? Or can they adopt to fulfill the conditions?
Posted by adenam (Member # 11902) on :
quote:Singles also have get married. Other conditions stipulate that the new owners have to build a house on the plot in three years. If the conditions are not fulfilled, the owners will have to pay 12,000 euros (15163 dollars).
Don't you read you're own news stories?
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
Maybe I was unclear... My questions were meant to mean: What constitutes unfulfilled conditions? If a couple turns out to be infertile, it would seem to be a government sponsored offer discriminating against applicants based on genetic factors. I have no idea what the laws of Austria are like, but surely this would be illegal in the USA, no?
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
I don't think it would be, no.
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
Also, what about a miscarriage? I assume it wouldn't fulfill the conditions, but then it would appear to punish the couple for their pain were they to unsuccessfully have a child by the end of the allotted time.
This just seems like such a bizarre idea to me. And, I think, highlights how dicey things get when the government starts trying to regulate reproduction (either limiting, or in this case, seemingly encouraging it).
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
They do allow 10 years.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
It's a little dicey, I guess. Doesn't seem overly problematic to me. In principle it's not different from child tax credits in the US.
Posted by Annie (Member # 295) on :
I imagine they have contingencies built in for the minority of cases in which the couple can't conceive a child.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
The village has an amazing 1,760 people. Methinks that this is more of a publicity stunt than a carefully weighed plan.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
It's no different than the incentives Russia has been offering their citizens to have more children, in fact I think it's even less extreme.
At least one US state, North Dakota, has offered a number of incentives to get people to stay in or move to North Dakota due to a fairly large migration of people out of the state. Granted I don't think any of those incentives deal with reproduction, it still has to do with offering carrots to alter demographics that naturally some people will and won't be able to partake in.
I don't see anything wrong with this. People would know before they attempted it what the terms of the deal are, and if some sort of hardship befalls them, they knew the risks going in. Tragedy doesn't absolve you of responsibility when you knew that such a thing was possible. And as far as fairness, I don't really see what the argument would be. Offering incentives to have children isn't unfairly discriminatory to the infertile. If something requires a specific kind of person to perform a specific function, like that a stripper needs to meet certain body qualifications, it's not unfair to exclude obese people for not meeting them, because they couldn't do the job (well, maybe at SOME strip clubs).
There are too many real forms of modern unfair discrimination out there that deserve real attention, like the disparity in pay between women and men (and a host of other women related occupational issues), racial discrimination, or the lack of equality when it comes to paternity leave versus maternity leave after couples have a baby. That last one might be low on some peoples' scale of importance, but it bothers me personally so I tossed it in there.
Posted by theamazeeaz (Member # 6970) on :
In the 1800s when the US was "giving away" land out west for settlers, you had to improve it in five years. People who failed to do so were kicked off that land. One famous example was the Wilders in the First Four Years.
Posted by beleaguered (Member # 11983) on :
I sure would like to find a deal like this. Is there any of this happening in Southern California by chance? . . .
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I'm told that Detroit has land *plus* a house for the price of an episode of House on iTunes.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Yep. Of course, many of those properties have issues that would involve spending a lot of money for other purposes, but the purchase price would be low.
There are towns in Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan) offering people free land if you put up a house and make it your primary residence.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Yeah, you can't actually live in any of those $1 houses, but there are quite a few of them.
Posted by Raymond Arnold (Member # 11712) on :
Okay, am I missing something with this Detroit thing? I'm assuming it's a joke but I've seen it in multiple threads now.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
I guess it being funny depends on who you are, but it's real. There are homes around here for sale for a dollar. Granted they're in a state of disrepair and would require a bit of money to make them habitable, but they are here and for sale. $2,000 can probably get you a home that you could live in, but it wouldn't be in a very good neighborhood.
On the news the other night they were saying that the average home in Detroit in the last 30 days sold for $7,000. It's not nearly that bad where I live, just outside of Detroit, but we get it on the news every night.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Also, they often have tax liens against them or the like. The sale price isn't a joke at all, though, and frequently they're still extremely cheap homes, even after the minimum necessary other expenditures.
Posted by Godric 2.0 (Member # 11443) on :
Yep, I think I'd take a home in Detroit for $1 before I took free land for promising to have a baby...
The whole concept is still very strange to my mind.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
There's gotta be a catch. 10years is an awfully long time to wait for a barbeque.
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
I think the catch is that you have to live in DETROIT! Maybe it's just my small town southern mind, but isn't that akin to living in, well, a war zone?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Only parts of it.
There's no comparison between Detroit and say, Baghdad. Our Green Zone is a lot more impressive.
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