Cato Comes Out in Favor of Eliminating the Mortgage Interest Rate Deduction

Vanessa Brown Calder

Using technocratic gobbledygook justifications, beltarian, Vanessa Brown Calder writes at Cato:

Whatever shape [tax] reform ultimately takes, Republicans are smart to flag the opportunity. Since the mortgage interest deduction disproportionately benefits high-income blue states while also redistributing to the wealthy, the politics of reform could unite some unlikely rivals. That might be just what tax reform needs.

She is apparently in support of the overall tax reform that will do nothing, for the most part, but shift the methods by which taxes are levied.

Sad.

For the record, we don't need a restructuring of the current tax system, we need tax cuts from the current framework. Tax cuts and a shrinkage of government spending.

Calder, by the way, is a specialist at Cato in "social welfare" policy. It would be fascinating to learn how Calder has overcome the problem that interpersonal comparisons of utility can't be made. a problem she must have solved to launch into social welfare policy prescriptions for all of us.

   -RW