Thanks for the background, P&M. I thought it might be something along that lines.

And if this is the new Lookout, I think UG and Merc could take a lesson. You catch more flies with honey etc. Scary Right is getting old.

I think the uncomfortable feeling associated with the flat tax has something to do with the "marginal utility of the dollar" or the fact that a dollar for the worker living on a minum age has more value to him in terms of purchasing power than a dollar to the millionaire.

There is also a psychological barrier assoicated with the flat tax. One might tend to have second thoughts when faced with paying $1.40 (30 cent VAT and 10 cent state sales tax) for a product worth $1.00 that you dont experience when you are only paying $1.10 (along with the current income tax that you dont see on each purchase).

Bullshit. Tag teaming has never been my style and certainly not with Merc.

I have not seriously engaged in political threads in a long time. After the latest round of "why is the cellar so different now..." crap in the other thread I chose to reengage here. On topic. My early posts were on topic and while you may disagree with my replies to TW even those you should be able to see were an attempt to get him to read my posts rather than his usual copy and paste. He has done so and I thought we had a decent discussion. Spexx is Spexx. This is what he does, he throws grenades and then says "look look, that nasty conservative guy was nasty" before dredging up a years old post as if that settled the issue.

I haven't changed my style of posting from anywhere in the cellar. Over the past 7 years I've been in and out of most of the forums depending on what grabbed me. In my 10,--- posts I'm pretty consistant. You may think I'm a vindictive asshole or a reasonable poster (I'm probably both) but you get what you see.

If spexx wants to play his games that's cool with me. My only involvement in this thread will be on topic.

I don't support a VAT because lower income households really do spend every dollar they earn and will be taxed on every dollar UNLESS we create more deductions, credits, and loopholes to help them out. More deductions, credits, and loopholes will be written by politicians and paid for by lobbiests. Who do you think they will really benefit.

I firmly support gutting the tax code. TW has the right idea when he says every politician should be able to complete their own tax forms. Interest on a owner occupied home should be deducted from gross income. After that a simple 1% up to $XX,000 and 20/25/30% across the board on every dollar beyond that. 1 form, done and dusted.

Well sorry, Lookout...you didn't post as sophomoric as Merc sometimes does, but I have a lingering memory of you being pretty shitty at times...usually just directed at 'silly libs'. This goes pretty far back though. It was the way everyone was posting though, due to the election.

I missed the reference is 183. I interpret his statement in 185 to separate military and R&D, it was a response to F&B's comment, which absolutely separated military and R&D. LO responded (you say calls me on it) with
Instead of saying
he made a nasty, demening, dismissive, off-topic comment.

In light of the recent Kim fiasco, I let him know, without insult,
I promise that I will not police the politics forum again. I'll see yout in the next "the politics forum is full of nast, mean people, who shouldn't say those things" thread.

I've had ug and merc on ignore for ages, and try as I might, I can't get past the second sentence of a tw post. Disjointed sentence fragments are unreadable to me.

Just curious, why do you feel that mortgage interest should be treated differently from other expenses?

I believe home ownership is a positive in that it encourages people to have roots. I believe people take pride in what they own vs what is just a temporary place to sleep. Areas with higher home ownership vs renters tend to benefit from better maintenance and lower crime. That results (over the long term) in higher property values. Desireable businesses tend to move into areas with well kept homes and low crime (which also tend to have higher levels of income) bringing jobs. Beyond that, home owners spend money on their houses and property. That is more money that flows into local businesses.

While an elimination of the deduction wouldn't result in every single family choosing to rent it would result in a larger number of renters. Some would look at the simple math and realize a home is no longer a strong asset in which to leave their money. Some would simply be unable to afford a home if they couldn't deduct it from their taxes. People choosing to rent over own would reduce the value of homes which would make them even less desireable to own. At some point only those who are absolutely hooked on the idea of ownership would continue to hold their properties.

Spexx, this is coming from a centrist who really likes to hear what you have to say, please try to stick with the meat of the posts. Lookout's style is meant to be amusing and if you read it without the hate of UG/Merc it really can be. He posts a lot like we used to when the Cellar had a strong political forum smart, edgy, and funny, nobody soft-selling their beliefs but not hating on each other. We have sucked ass here for quite a while and we all need to be on board if we're going to get real again.

I'd like to end the home deduction because it creates an unnatural pressure to buy that played into the bubble a bit.

Do people really do that, though? Buy a house thinking, "Ooh, and this'll be a big tax deduction?" We certainly didn't. Didn't even occur to us until the first tax year after we bought it. But maybe we're weird.

Good question. It would seem to raise the value of a house... I'm an owner-builder though so it is just theory for me.

A family who pays $12,000 in mortgage interest each year on a $80,000 family income would probably say that$2-2,500 really makes a big difference to their bottom line. Couldn't they survive without it? Probably but we've got a lot of empty houses and homes underwater right now. I think keeping an incentive on homeownership in place would be a positive. Over the long term I could see phasing it out to encourage more home owners vs those who carry mortgages for life, but the country just isn't there right now.

Griff, I believe the unnatural pressure to buy came from our government telling us everyone should be a homeowner and then dropping and keeping interest rates far too low for far too long. That created a mindset that houses were not homes but merely short term investments with 70-80% profits every two years. Not good.

Rather like health insurance pushes up the cost of health care, perhaps the mortgage interest deduction artificially inflates housing prices. (This might be the same same thing Griff was saying in post #264.)

I personally find value in the homeownership/roots/community side of things but you aren't going to break my heart if you say ZERO deductions.

It wouldn't hurt us any if that deduction was taken away as long as the standard deduction stayed the same. We didn't go for a mortgage that was out of our reach...and thank god for that. Our house isn't much, but it sure is within our means.