The Wall Street Jounal had an almost great article about home ownership, or how little most of own after years of making mortgage payments. Putting the "Own" back in Homeowner One of my pet peeves is the mortgage interest deduction, which encourages us to never pay off our mortgages.
The mortgage interest deduction makes no sense, and I'm in real estate. In fact, no incentives to home ownership make any sense. We need to have a mobile workforce to satisfy rapidly changing job market needs, not only in skills, but in geography. Right now the collapsed housing market in rural Northern California has many people trapped far away from the best job markets. If they leave they're forced to sell their home at a great loss, or rent it and suffer negative cash flow while trying to make rent or house payments at their new place of employment..
Home mortgage interest deduction makes as much sense as not taxing employer-provided health insurance as compensation. Where do we keep coming up with these dumb ideas? Oh, that's right, we don't. Politicians do, then buy our votes.
In the world of Progressive Democrats the Uber-State seizes nearly all earnings of workers and capitalists to redistribute to Cronys and voting drones.
ReplyDeleteThe road of good intentions, encouraging home ownership, or a college education has been taken far past the point of diminishing returns. Many programs developed partially to encourage people to move away from first strike nuclear war targets out to suburbs with a chance at survival and victory over the tightly clustered commies have outlived their purpose.
Any program that uses Tax dollars to "nudge" behavior ought to be strongly discouraged as an attack on freedom.
Freedom requires individuals being allowed to leave the creches of the the Nanny State.