The Way Forward: End Tax Expenditures

[Hyperion]

[The Dharma Bum]

[Winchester]

[Mathurin]

[Revenant]

[Revenant]

So after about 5 pages of banging my head against a wall basically I haven't seen a refutation to the following points:

- The home mortgage interest deduction incentivizes greater and greater indebtedness and leverage, helping to fuel speculative bubbles in the real estate market
- Encouraging home-ownership as a norm through tax policy encourages urban sprawl, which is incredibly inefficient and contributes to unjustifiable environmental degradation
- The home mortgage interest deduction is regressive from a tax standpoint, benefiting the wealthiest top 20% at the expense of everyone else

And no, "you're a big meanie who wants to screw the middle class" is not a legitimate argument. That's quite rich coming from people defending the loopholes that benefit...the rich.

[Hyperion]

[The Dharma Bum]

[The Dharma Bum]

Furthermore further devaluation of home prices is what will fuel a speculative bubble when investors rush in to purchase all of the homes that have been lost to foreclosure.

This will literally transform the housing market to one that consists of highly leveraged speculation as investors buy these properties on credit and rent them out for much more than someone's mortgage would have been.

[The Dharma Bum]