Get Homeowners Off Welfare

Washington loves to throw money at those who purchase houses. A lot of good that's done

Illustration by Harry Campbell for TIME

For a nation whose citizens pride themselves on self-reliance, the U.S. doles out an awful lot of welfare. Corporations get it. Farmers get it. Even poor people get it. But no other interest group makes out quite the way homeowners do. They — or we, I should say, for I'm a homeowner too — are at the receiving end of a truly staggering array of subsidies and tax breaks. Putting an exact price tag on all of them is impossible, but the value is clearly in the hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Even with all this aid, though, U.S....

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