Well, that gets right to the core of it. In my view, you're being bought off with special favors from the state. While I'd never disparage anyone personally for playing the "I got mine" game, I can't advocate for it as policy, especially when it perpetuates government that I consider ultimately corrosive to freedom.
Not a very effective buy-off, considering I already stated that I support repeal of the income taxe...
That's not the claim. The point is, the deduction is for loan interest, and encourages people to hold more debt than they would otherwise.
Again, utter nonsense.
In general terms, you may reduce your taxable income by the interest you pay, I would say 4% as an average. The effect on taxes paid is negligible. In most cases, the Standard Deduction is still greater than itemizing with a mortgage deduction.
That means they'll be willing to purchase with less of a down payment (less real ownership), buy more expensive houses and pay more interest to banks than they would without the law. That's the point of the law in the first place. That's why it's targeted at loan interest rather than ownership costs.
It is intended to promote home ownership among the lower echelons of society. Whether it achieves the goal is questionable. I can only speak for myself, but when I bought my first home, the mortgage deduction never even entered the equation. Building equity, freezing monthly expenditures, yes; a minute tax break? Not so much.
I'm here to talk ideas that transcend partisan bickering. I see no point in "smacking him down" if he's right in what he's saying. Indeed, if I can find common ground with liberals who see the downsides of state economic intervention, I call it a win. Maybe they'll think twice about voting for yet another corporatist tool simply because he's a 'D'.
There is nothing "right" about the mindless class warfare he engaged in. Mortgage deductions are NOT a "tax break for the rich" as the Marxist website he linked claimed. His position is stupidity, an appeal to the envy and ignorance of people. An attempt to instill hostility based on demagoguery.
And there is no "common ground." The left is openly hostile to Constitutional governance and civil rights. I have nothing common with those goals and actively oppose them.
I mean, I see no point in saying "gee, I don't like your killing fields, but they are neat and clean, so I won't criticize them." The left seeks to complete the transformation from a nominally free nation to rigid, authoritarian socialist enclave. I oppose everything they stand for.
What matters, to me at least, is that manipulating our economic decisions like that isn't why we gave government the power to tax us. And I don't think we should let them get away with using it in that way.
Again, that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
How do you suppose we get to a flat tax with zero deductions when you keep defending the deductions that benefit you, and only complain about those that benefit others? You have to give up your own sacred cows before we can expect to make real progress.
This is the same sort of argument I've been running into with First Amendment religious freedoms. People think freedom is enhanced, at least partially, when government grants exemptions and perks to special interest groups, but it's not. That practice diminishes freedom, even for those receiving the perks. It undermines equal rights and equal protection and sets the state up as the 'decider' in who wins and loses in society. It's the antithesis if libertarian ideals.
It's like someone declaring "I think death is unfair, we should live forever," and then complaining that accepting cancer treatments is betrayal of the ideal that death should not exist. I find it irrational.
I oppose the income tax, but the reality is that it exists. Failing to take a legal deduction is simply stupid.
