Short sighted in Sacramento?
According to this item from Los Angeles, there are some idiot rulers in Sacramento seriously considering killing the tax deduction for home mortgages in order to generate what they guesstimate to be five billion dollars of new tax revenue.
While there is a very slim chance of that being the actual result for one year at the most, it doesn’t take a genius to follow the chain of events that would be triggered by such a ridiculous move. Taking away this tax deduction would have a much more widespread impact than the infamous jump in sub-prime mortgage payments has. The resulting plummet in real estate values would hit income and property tax revenues by many times that amount.
Of course, none of our rulers, in Sacto or DC, have a reputation for factoring in long term consequences of their actions. Most of them can’t see beyond the next election and couldn’t care one bit less about what might happen after that.