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Politics : The Castle -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (248)	11/11/2002 11:57:50 AM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 7936

Take the case of housing. In some instances, it is better to rent. However, you forego certain advantages of ownership, such as the long term accumulation of equity, and the ability to fix costs as a hedge against inflation. Waiting to save the money to buy would merely keep you in rental properties, and defer or negate the advantages of ownership. Thus, people take out mortgages. Similarly, few people can afford a car upfront. They would have to rent, in the absence of highly accessible public transportation. But again, they would lose their equity stake, and rental would cost more than borrowing in the long run. A car would not only be convenient, but may transport one to work, or allow one to live someone cheaper than the central city, while working downtown. Thus, one may accrue further financial advantages. In the same way, the federal government may find it desirable to own rather than rent, especially if the investment is productive in its own right, without having to defer purchase until the money is saved. Your argument might make some sense if you could compare cars and housing to gov't property. However, I don't believe they are comparable. Housing and cars are commodities for which there is an on going market for buying and selling in all but the very worse of times. Gov't properties, on the other hand, are customized to meet the needs of the owner, the gov't, and often are considered white elephants when put on the market for sale. For an example the demand for former missile silos is a very, very small, almost non existent one. For that reason, gov't property rarely ever commands market value but rather usually proves to be a significant loss for the gov't........and really not good collateral for the amount of debt that was needed to build or pay for the property in the first place. Having said that, I am not all that concern with whether the gov't owns or rent......in fact, that's not the argument at all. My argument is that the gov't should not spend more than the income it makes. How it chooses to spend that income.......whether to own or rent.....is unimportant to me. What's important to me is choosing the path that maximizes the most benefit of the dollars it has at its command. ted