One: Eliminate the mortgage tax deduction, which lets homeowners deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages. Gone. After all, big houses get bigger tax breaks, driving up prices for everyone. Why distort the housing market and subsidize people buying expensive houses?
via Six Policies Economists Love And Politicians Hate : Planet Money : NPR.
I was more offended, meanwhile, by the kindergarten quality of writing I witnessed from the Blockshopper writers. The most basic rules of spelling and grammar were violated and tortured on a regular basis. Some writers didn’t even understand the concept of inserting an article like “a” or “an” before a noun. I emailed my supervisor to complain and was told I should give them a break because they were from the Philippines. English may have not been their first language.
The answer was no, and this phone call was the last straw for me. How could news stories with the Chicago Tribune’s banner on them follow journalistic practices that would make a high-school newspaper reporter blush?
Of course, one man’s burden is another man’s opportunity. Student debt in the United States now exceeds $1 trillion. Like cigarette duties or state lotteries, debt-financed accreditation functions as a tax on the poor. But whereas sin taxes at least subsidize social spending, the “graduation tax” is doubly regressive, transferring funds from the young and poor to the old and affluent.
As the credentialism compulsion seeps down the socioeconomic ladder, universities jack up fees and taxi drivers hire $200-an-hour SAT tutors for their children. The collective impact may be ruinous, but for individuals the outlays seem justified. As a consequence, college tuitions are nowhere near their limit; as long as access to the workforce is controlled by the bachelor’s degree, students will pay more and more.
“It used to be you had real friends on the other side of the aisle. It’s not like that anymore. Society has changed. The public is to blame as well. I think the people have gotten dumber. I don’t know that I would’ve said that out loud pre-my announcement that I was going to be leaving. [Laughter] But I think that’s true. I mean everything has changed. The media has changed. We now give broadcast licenses to philosophies instead of people. People get confused and think there is no difference between news and entertainment. People who project themselves as journalists on television don’t know the first thing about journalism. They are just there stirring up a hockey game,” – Gary Ackerman a retiring 30 year veteran of Congress, responding to the question “Can you define comity as it existed when you arrived versus how it exists now?”
