Photo by Dovina is Devine
After negotiating a debt limit deal that included no tax increases, the ink was hardly dry on the paper before President Obama and Harry Reid started talking about what? That’s right, tax increases.
We hear it over and over again that the rich must pay their fair share. It is often parroted by the likes of Warren Buffet and Matt Damon. “I can pay more,” they say. I say, what’s stopping you? The Treasury has an account set up just for folks like you who feel you are not taxed enough. As Buffet has said, “I could give away 99% of my wealth and my family would still want for nothing.” Movie actors like Damon get paid tens of millions for a single film. It’s nice that the “I can’t spend it faster than I make it crowd,” volunteers that we all have to pitch in. But what happens when a sacred progressive program gets in the way?
Take rent control. In New York City, rent control is a sacred progressive program. “We need affordable housing for the middle class or they will be driven out of the city.” Rent control was responsible for many abandoned buildings in the 1970s and 1980s that turned into drug dens or were set ablaze, because landlords couldn’t raise rents to cover their costs so they just walked away. Tax revenue to the city walked with them. But don’t you dare challenge rent control and put those poor people on the street. Meet the defendant in case No. 7666/11, whose landlord claims she is not entitled to rent control on her apartment. Her name is Faye Dunaway. Yes, that Faye Dunaway. Her landlord argues that this is not her primary residence and that she lives, votes, and registers her cars in California. The rent stabilization rules require tenants to live in the apartment they are renting as a primary residence. Her rent for the one-bedroom walk-up is $1,048.72, but if allowed to rise to market rates it would probably be around $2,318 per month. Would Ms. Dunaway be forced to move to Queens if her rent increased?
How about former mayor Ed Koch. While he was given a mansion to live in, as all mayors are during their tenure, in his case twelve years, he never let go of his rent controlled apartment in Greenwich Village. How would he makes ends meet if he had to pay market rent? After all, isn’t that the purpose of the law to help rich white Democrats pocket more dough? Okay it wasn’t fair to single out white Democrats, how about Charlie Rangel? He had four rent controlled apartments. Three of them were adjoining, so he had some of the walls knocked down to make a really swell place. What about the fourth, you ask? Oh, that was for his district Congressional office. Rangel whose salary alone puts him squarely in the top 5% of all earners used to chair the committee that writes the tax laws, but seemed to have a problem remembering such things as income from a villa in the Dominican Republic so he didn’t exactly pay all his taxes. He’s still serving in Congress and not a guest of the IRS in prison. I guess he used the famous Steve Martin defense, “I forgot.”
Perhaps all the little people who the progressives argue need things like rent control would be helped if the rich Democrats would only get out of their apartments.
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.