Letters to the Editor
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You are right and Can you be my landlord?
Anonymous 3:14 - you are so right. In general, landlords tend to be greedy lazy bastards, and some are downright deceitful (inducing the signing of leases with lies and promises unfulfilled). When rents began dropping in Boston, most landlords started offering 1 (or 2) month(s)free, but of course, it wasn't 1 or two months free, it was spread over 12 months, making a $1000 a month rent, $917 per month. But, the apartment was still listed at $1000 a month so that none of the other tenants (in the same building or on the same street) wouldn't know they lowered the price. Some tenants were specifically told not to tell other tenants about the arrangement.
And to Timbuktom - you cut grass, tweak toilets, and kiss tenant butt? Can you be my landlord? My husband had his right leg amputated this past summer, and I ask you, do you think we have railings on the stairs yet? Do you really need me to answer?
Renting sucks, and owning sucks. Basically, being part of this economy, if you have no money (sometimes caused by a serious health problem) you're screwed.
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Here's who owns the land, ChrisBieber
Whoever or whatever the law says. If the law says that because certain criteria have been met, a person or institution "owns" the land, then so be it. If the law further says that the person or institution which owns the land must also pay taxes on that land, then so be it. We're a nation of laws.
When you get down to it, how can anyone "own" part of the planet Earth? It was there before we came, and it will be there after we leave. Ergo, "ownership" is an artificial concept based upon the laws of a particular human society. You live in that society, you accept its laws or change them according to whatever process for change is in place at the time; in the USA, that would be the democratic process via our representative government.
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The Scriptures of the Free Market Religion
Dear Mr. Leonard:
I do not understand why you are giving this fascist garbage any respect at all. This Robber Baron apologia must be slam-dunked at every turn and exposed for the morally-bankrupt and rampant criminality it serves to rationalize.
This is just a mean corollary of the radical Corporatist theology of the so-called "Chicago School" of FreeMarket religious orthodoxy. We must remember that when these "academics" and "scholars" - or King Dubya and The Shooter - use the word "Freedom" they do not mean the same thing the rest of us do, or what the "Founders" had in mind. What they mean is the freedom of Big Capital to do whatever it pleases, whenever it pleases, wherever it pleases, to whomever it pleases; a core foundational belief of today's so-called movement conservatives, neocons and Reflublicans. These fanatics could not care less about any notions of personal liberty or individual civil rights - quaint anachronisms to these thugs. These people worship only money and power; the only virtue they recognize is greed.
What could be more revealing than this sort of propaganda coming on the heels of the broad-based sub-prime lending scam. In the wake of the "Ray Gun Reolution" the US government has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate America; our elected officals have been transformed into errand boys for transnational capital. They have only contempt for government and the governed; they recognize no notion of sovereignty beyond their corporate boardroom. They have been at war with the American working- and middle-class for 25 years with the ultimate goal of defrauding all Americans of their assets, destroying their communities, their churches, their schools, and transforming all Americans (except the corporate elite) into illiterate and destitute wage-slaves shuttled about the landscape wherever they are needed in service of the god of greed.
Their goal, of course, is an America none of us would recognize; an America where everyone and everything is subserviant to the Corporatist religion. Bow down and worship the new monarchy - a return to the 13th century. That is our future; as long as writers from so-called progressive and liberal sources like Salon continue to permit these crooks to hide behind their phony baloney FreeMarket theology, cooked-up by bogus "think tanks", as if this bilge actually had an iota of intellectual validity or academic credibilty, then there is absolutely no hope for us to reverse the course we are on. You must stop pretending, Mr. Leonard, that these people have any intellectual honesty whatsoever.
Our character is our fate and our business, political and religious power elites have no character at all. I don't know if we can throw the bums out or not, but I will refuse to my last breath to lay down for these gangsters.
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Renting does not cause moving.
Many commenters seem to be reading this post as saying that home-ownership should be discouraged to force people to move where the jobs are.
I don't think that is the point. The point is that renters have fewer costs of moving so it is easier for them to move, IF THEY WANT TO MOVE!
Obviously renters can choose to stay put in a certain place for as long as they want. They can get involved in the community and vote in local elections and so forth.
The difference is that if the local economy tanks and renters start suffering, they do not feel chained to the premises they live in in the same was as a home owner.
As long as we resist full on communism, people will have to "serve their corporate masters" if they want to make ends meet. The only issue is if they should have flexibility to go where they are best paid for their service or stay rooted in a place where their efforts are poorly rewarded.
Home ownership can be an economic boon for those who bought low and sell high. When buying a home is a chance to use someone else's cheap money to acquire a large asset that is due to appreciate, buying makes sense. In many cases it does not.
Our national obsession with home ownership and the tax treatment it recieves encourages many people (including many people who know they don't want to stay where they are for very long) to buy a house and they lose out overall due to transaction costs when they want to move on to a better chance in life and have to sell their house too soon.
That very thing happened to a few friends of mine.
People may choose to be mobile or to establish themselves, but our tax code should probably be neutral on the issue, if only in the name of fairness.