I read at http://uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Imperial that Imperial Luck is activated once you begin the quest "Before the Storm", even if you are a non-Imperial. I have the unofficial patch that solves this, but I can't start a new game to make it take effect. The article says that you can use set ImperialLuck to 100 in the console in order to remove the trait, but how do I know it actually works?

It doesn't matter anyway. Gold is really easy to make and it has limited use.

Yes.

Imperials need a better attribute.