How Homeownership Became the Engine of American Inequality
An enormous entitlement in the tax code props up home prices — and overwhelmingly benefits the wealthy and the upper middle class.
Hasnain says:
Amazing and extremely sad read.
Also selfishly makes me wonder whether I should get in on this whole mortgage interest deduction thing.
"Racial exclusion was Roosevelt’s first concession to pass the New Deal; his second, to avoid a tax revolt, was to rely on regressive and largely hidden payroll taxes to fund generous social-welfare programs. A result, the historian Michelmore observes, is that we “never asked ordinary taxpayers to pay for the economic security many soon came to expect as a matter of right.” In providing millions of middle-class families stealth benefits, the American government rendered itself invisible to those families, who soon came to see their success as wholly self-made. We forgot because we were not meant to remember."
Posted on 2017-05-10T00:29:36+0000