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by TimTheTinker
1831 days ago
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I don't think I've moved goalposts -- maybe just failed to articulate my concern precisely. (And only skimmed the article you linked.) If the government purchases real estate with its own money and later sells it--fine by me. They have business to take care of and need places to do it. What bothers me specifically would be a growing federal or state government stake in assets owned by others by virtue of a tax law that grants them such ownership. I imagine whole swaths of businesses, apartments, and other buildings in cities across the US that are >50% owned by the government 40 years from now. It would push us a lot closer to a world where people don't own anything anymore besides their own houses (maybe not even that) and the government owns everything. |
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I'm really struggling to understand this point of view, given the article that you couldn't be bothered to read says the US government owns 15% of all real estate already.
In my country, the reason that a lot of people own their houses is because the government sold its housing stock to residents in the 1980s and 1990s. That created a majority of homeowners, for the first time.
The fact that the government didn't replace this housing stock has been the cause of a massive generational rift, with a reduction in owner-occupancy from that peak, down to the point that a plurality of people (the vast majority of people under 45 - almost all young families) are now private renters in insecure housing situations.
While that same housing stock - originally built by the people, for the people - is increasingly dominated by exploitative for-profit landlords.