What is the value of homeownership? Why does the government give people incentives to buy homes in the form of tax breaks, etc?
Is this to create more debt and therefore more currency in circulation or is it to benefit the homeowner in some way?
It is failed government policy that set all this in motion, the question is: Why were those policies put in place? Are they for the people or for the government or what?
"Governments subsidise home ownership because they think it encourages stable, more law-abiding neighbourhoods. The children of homeowners do better at school than the children of renters do. Homeowners are more engaged in local democracy. And, because homeowners must pay off their mortgages, housing supposedly encourages people to save more than they otherwise would."
Is it any surprise that the kind of people who save up a huge amount of money to make a down payment and are consistently responsible enough to always make large mortgage payments are 'good' people?
By 'good' I simply mean the kind of people who abide by laws, encourage their children in their school work, take an active interest in local government, etc.
This reminds me of a program they had in Illinois where the state decided to send books to all new parents. Some study found that children who grew up in houses with lots of books did better on a wide variety of metrics so the government reasoned that sending books to parents would somehow help the kids. It never occurred to them that the key was that type of people who bought/read a lot of books where also the type of people who were better parents.
Oh, I agree - but I was answering a question: "Why does the government..." Is this scientific policy? Is this good policy? Those are different questions.
Greenspan quote from 2007: "I believed then, as now, that the benefits of broadened home ownership are worth the risk. Protection of property rights, so critical to a market economy, requires a critical mass of owners to sustain political support."
Is this to create more debt and therefore more currency in circulation or is it to benefit the homeowner in some way?
It is failed government policy that set all this in motion, the question is: Why were those policies put in place? Are they for the people or for the government or what?