Robinson's post jibes perfectly with Tea Partiers' cognitive dissonance when it comes to Big Gubument bailing them out their entire lives. The home mortgage interest tax deduction is one of the biggest examples of their willful ignorance: Big Gubument pays them to own a house, while propping up the housing sector. I'm not saying that's a bad policy, necessarily, but it's certainly a distortion of the free market and a handout to those who should "fend for themselves."
Going further back, let's recall that many of your parents or grandparents were the recipients of FDR's G.I. Bill home loan guarantees: "From 1944 to 1952, VA [Veterans Administration] backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II veterans." And how much are those 2.4 million homes (now owned free and clear) worth today?
Wrote Robinson:
"Did Mr. Self-Made Man grow up in a VA or FHA-funded house? Attend a public school or college? Go to school on the GI Bill, Pell Grants, or student loans? Does he claim a mortgage interest tax deduction every year? Does he support his retired parents out of pocket, or does Social Security do it for him? Does his employer get government contracts or subsidies that make his paycheck possible? Does his business depend on a sound currency, enforceable contracts, or reliable transportation systems?
"It's like his rich Uncle Sam, the benefactor whose generous bequests paid his way into the middle class, has been written totally out of his entire life story. Forget gratitude; these social contract deniers insist loudly that none of that ever happened. At all. They pay taxes; but they've never seen a cent returned to them for anything. And they write their 'self-made' myths accordingly.
["...]
"Sixty percent of people who get home mortgage interest deductions (one of the most important and lucrative middle-class subsidies going) don't see this as a form of government help to their households, even though many of them wouldn't be homeowners at all without it. Fifty-three percent of the people who got through college on student loans -- and 40 percent of GI Bill beneficiaries -- also think they've paid their own freight. And 44 percent of Social Security recipients don't think that Social Security is a government program -- which comes as no surprise to those of us who remember the ubiquitous calls during last year's health care fight to 'get your fllthy government hands off my Social Security.'"
I would also add that any "self-made" man who hired employees who were products of public education did not make it on his own. Or hired somebody who lived in public housing, received food stamps, aid for their dependent children, Social Security survivor's benefits, Medicaid, or used subsidized public transportation -- because these gov't services lower their employees' expenses and depress their wage demands.
This is not to mention that people who are working -- even if they are working poor people -- commit fewer crimes and cost the state less in terms of social ills. Thus it behooves gov't to subsidize workers' expenses so that they can work honestly and still meet their basic needs.
Unfortunately, you'll never hear obvious, commonsense arguments like this from the Right. There are no more grownups left at the table.
By Sara Robinson
October 29, 2010 | Campaign For America's Future
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