Quotes for Today

Some quotes I hope may resonate with you.

"No man who owns his own house and lot can be a Communist. He has too much to do." - Bill Levitt

"If your opinions on one subject can be predicted from your opinions on another, you may be in the grip of an ideology. When you truly think for yourself, your conclusions will not be predictable." - Kevin Kelly

"Inspiration is perishable - act on it immediately. - Naval Ravikant

"We don't stop playing because we get old, we get old because we stop playing." - Doyle Brunson

Real Home Ownership Incentive

The Federal Government incents home ownership by allowing the deduction of mortgage interest payments from your yearly tax returns.

I think if they really wanted to have an incentive for home ownership the deduction wouldn't just be for the mortgage interest but should also reward homeowners who have paid off their mortgage.

A simple way to do this would be to have a table that listed the allowable deduction for homes owned without a mortgage. That table would be based upon the home's locally assessed value. This would have the added value of creating a trade-off where higher local assessed value creates value for both the homeowner and local government (which provides many of the services needed by the homeowner). Say a home has a valuation moved from $200,000 to $250,000 - the homeowner gets a higher value deduction while the community gets more local tax revenue to pay for a new school, additional police details, a new fire truck, etc. That could be an equal trade-off money wise for the homeowner but an increase in the number or quality of local services.

Just a thought.

EDIT: There's a much more elegant solution proposed in the comments.