[PEN-L:11489] Re: Home Mortgage Deduction

["William S. Lear" <rael@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, July 29, 1997 at 05:38:47 (-0700) Louis Proyect writes:
>                                                       The ruling class
>understood that workers who owned rather than rented tended to adopt
>petty-bourgeois prejudices more easily.

Covering similar ground in his 1912 book _American City Government_,
the historian Charles Beard writes that "strange as it may seem, it is
often disadvantageous for the working man to own his house, because he
is thereby less free to resist wage reductions in his neighborhood, is
under greater stress in periods of unemployment because he cannot move
freely to other places in search of work, and in general is prevented
from following the higher grade and better paid industries which may
rise in other parts of the country.  The working man who owns a home
encumbered with a mortgage is less liable to join with his fellows in
resisting a wage reduction and an increase in the onerous conditions
of labor." (p. 11)


Bill