this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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To an extent "Homestead Exemption" can do this, if the exemption is a significant chunk of the taxable value - which it has been at some times (my first house's HX was 50% of its taxable value), and not so much at other times (we're at about 10% now)....
So, if you've got 50% homestead exemption, you only get that on your first home and you pay double taxes on others. But, if you're playing in the 10% bracket that's basically in the noise.
See the problem with this, which is something on the ballot locally, is that people buy properties here to get tax exemptions and live elsewhere the majority of the time. Ironically the proposed homestead exemption will increase the amount of property tax I will pay compared to the current model; likely because they added extra fees.
Which is illegal, but hard to prove without tipping the hand of the surveillance state. They know who the cheaters are, but they don't want to say how they know.
Any change to property taxes increases the amount some people pay because property tax base rates are adjusted to be "revenue neutral" - getting all the money they need to provide the services they have committed to. So, rule changes never lessen the total burden, only shift it around.
Floriduh made a big deal about lottery income paying for education, but in truth (the educated know that) only 5% of the schools' cost is paid by the lottery operations, the other 95% mostly comes from property taxes - so, thank a lottery player for reducing your property taxes by about 2%, 35-40% of an average property tax bill goes to education.
You nailed it. Funny how easy you picked up on certain details.
I didn't know the lottery thing was that bad. The main issues with the proposed change is that they're closing schools down, so the funding will likely go to some bullshit. I mean they used 55 million on fixing the stupid stadium under the guise that insurance and FEMA will reimburse the costs only for them to move to Tampa anyway---good riddance. And another fun thing I saw is that Article 3 will add in funding to fix the sewer systems... which I already pay every month with the crazy water bill. And the cheater part, yeah they don't care. I fixed a machine downtown and the couple said oh yeah this place only cost 1.8 million. So of course the city is happy to turn a blind eye. So I'm okay with services being funded but not giving billionaires tax payer dollars for a stadium; that's dumb and really everyone should get a refund on this expense. I got a lot of down votes on reddit for this opinion but it's like if you love your baseball team so much, you go donate and leave me out of it.
I think it's a split, likely 50/50 between "other alternate more cost effective school options" which amounts to paying parents to home school or paying private schools by the state, but at a lower rate than state schools and with even worse effectiveness assurances than the public schools if you can even imagine that to be possible. The other 50 is going to go to all kinds of grift while the property tax payers aren't looking at how the cost of schools (on their tax bills) is dropping.
Funny, a big problem we had in schools when I attended in the 70s/80s was sports sucking up all the funding, new money going to a football stadium instead of fixing the wet roof that filled the high school with mold spores - I had chronic bronchitis for 4 years, coincitentally only while school was in session, only while I was attending in that building - never in summers, off to college? Miracle cure.
Oh yeah, didn't change when I was in High School. The football field held all the priority. Yet my last year, you had to pay to participate in sports.... Health class was held in something that looked like a dark prison cell.