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To: Tradelite who wrote (145267)	1/22/2002 6:59:30 PM
From: reaper	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 436258

<<Surely you would not prefer that everyone rent? >> I do not understand your point. If everybody on my street rented then the property taxes would be paid by the absentee owners. I mean, SOMEBODY owns the damn place. The only way that home OWNERSHIP would INCREASE property taxes would be if that via home ownership prices were inflated above prices that would prevail if the building were a cash-flow producing asset (i.e. its "inherent" value, as a rental property). Which again is precisely my point. <<And isn't it clear why Fannie and Freddie exist and why the government encourages home ownership? >> Well, now that you put it that way, I would say that they exist for the primary purpose of inflating the value of real estate and therefore inflating the tax base, allowing the government to take more of its citizens' wealth. Which of course takes us full circle to our discussion of a couple of days ago re: the change in the CPI, which was also designed to take an increasing share of national wealth to Washington DC in the form of taxes. In fact, the sole purpose of pretty much ANYTHING the gov't "encourages" is to increase its tax base. Cheers