Cars? Incompatible with Portland?
See: "Take it from Fireman Randy"

The title of this post should be: "If cars served as a better vehicle for taxation to the graft kings then cars would become king."

Modern Slavery

"The most common form of slavery is debt bondage, in which a human being becomes collateral against a loan. With a massive population boom in regions of staggering poverty, some families have nothing to pledge for a loan but their own labor. With inflated interest rates, debts are often inherited, ensnaring generations. 15 to 20 million slaves are in debt bondage in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan."

The interest-rate-only focus for dealing with Usury falls flat if a lower RATE is more than compensated by and adjustment in price of the dead-asset home. For proof: let's standardize the appraisal of residential property based on rental justified pricing, such as capitalization rate where an investor can expect (or hope) to get all their money back from rent -- so as to compare the investment to investing in something like a grocery store. A home is not an investment, except as a means of obtaining interest payments, and it given that low interest rates translates to higher prices the take in interest stays relatively static when compared to wage levels.

I should be able to tap into the anti-Bush religious fervor merely by noting that he is all fired about about an "ownership" society, through debt; debt that IS NOT USED for productive purposes that would compete with stale and moving-off-shore enterprises. Gil's rules of reason would apply. Capital Gains that do not keep pace with the declining value of the dollar as the supply increases still give folks a sufficient feeling of increased wealth so as to macro economics.

Imagine if, notwithstanding federalized secondary markets for debt-slavery documents, that homes were priced by statutory command for purposes of local property taxation the same as if they were rentals?

Imagine of interest rate "aid" to "stimulate" (through incurring debt and capital gains for sellers) the economy were limited to folks that had no assets and a wage below the median private sector wage -- below a "living wage" to use a modern PC term.

Public debt, i.e., bonds, and private debt, predominantly on housing to cover someone else's capital gain on asset price inflation, have a common pool of resources for cover -- isolating out the asset-inflation/structural-dollar-devaluation thing as it is purely a bubble thing that disrupts some other economic equilibrium -- and that is the wages of the locals.

If only Randy or Erik were as smart as the Chimp, or at least held some faint bit of skepticism for why it is that Bush seems all upbeat about the increase in mortgage debt (oops ownership by way of debt). Erik and Randy see windfall gain, which must be taxed, rather than progress on the road to serfdom with each uptick in the "value" of property.

It is unfortunate that even Isaac has subscribed to the Gil rule of reason, by not seeing debt as a path toward actuarial underfunded liability hell for local wage earners. We can progress, like in Britain, to 40 year mortgages or fifty year mortgages so as to continue to prop up the "value" (price level) of homes, for the benefit of "potential" sellers so that that they "feel good" and thus spend like a cocaine addict.

If my unmanipulated price of a median wage earner home at equilibrium is at roughly 120 grand but I could get a loan for twice that (but only on the home, to be considered an asset in a bank at the face value of the sale transaction) ask why I could not obtain a loan for 240 grand and apply 120 grand for the full price of the home and the other 120 grand to ALSO start my own grocery store? Or, using the other 120 grand to buy several fancy cars?

The money-lenders that stimulate "good feelings" through asset-price-hyperinflation, dead-asset-residential-property no less, get their interest rate take from "wage" income while the local government property-taxers of residential property of actuarially upside down serfs get a roughly equivalent take - from the wage income of the very same serfs.

When the student loan peddlers start talking in terms of life-time earnings as a reason to enter into debt that has a distorted collection method as compared to any other capitalist entrepreneurial debt the hair on the back of your neck should stand on end.

Still, it remains in the self interest, in micro economic terms, for Randy or Erik or anyone else on the city council, to incur debt in the name of us all so as to serve the private interests of their connected voter base -- notwithstanding the economic folly of it all in aggregate. If cars served as a better vehicle for taxation to the graft kings then cars would become king.