I can think of other benefits to that arrangement. Why doesn’t everyone do that already, for all major assets?
I suspect that only the wealthy have assets worth enough for this to make economic sense… Although I’ll bet that somewhere, somebody is deducting interest for the capital expense of all those cars that are leased…Certainly most busines/private jets are owned by corporations or leased rather than owned fee total by individuals so that interest and maintenance are deducted from taxes somewhere as expenses…
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I don’t know about the wool market[1], but NZ[2] is responsible for over a third of dairy exports, and manages it without subsidies.
[1] according to Wiki, NZ’s share of that is only 11%
[2] well, NZ farmers are …
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So THAT explains the difficulty I’ve been having with this bread dough! 
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Thank you for your concern. Could you please forward a complete list of all the news stories that you feel Boing Boing should cover, as well as those you feel they should not cover, to wedontcare@lolarbear.com
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[quote=“micah, post:42, topic:50578, full:true”]First you don’t get to deduct credit card interest or auto loan interest. So why mortgage interest?[/quote]I’d pose that the other way: Why shouldn’t you be able to deduct CC and auto loan interest?
[quote=“micah, post:42, topic:50578, full:true”]Second the mortgage interest deduction is regressive (it benefits people in higher tax brackets more than lower brackets and has no benefit to people who don’t itemize their deductions)[/quote]No, it benefits people in the middle class more than those in higher tax brackets. The 1%ers either own their homes outright, or are using it as a lower-interest loan while investing the money elsewhere (in which case it’s only the banks being affected, as they’d move the loan to a business expense otherwise).
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B-b-but Clinton! BENGHAZI!
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OK, now lets see if I’ve gotten it right. If you give Fed money to people who need food to eat, that’s some sort of liberal socialism. If you give money to farm business’s that’s…what? Trickle Down Economics? Market Economics? Rugged Individualist Economics? Nahhhhhh just Something For Nothing Economics.
I guess that means that the majority of middle class tax paying Americans should be classified as dairy farmers because Dems and Reps both seem to be more than willing to milk us dry while padding their own larder and not really achieving much of anything.
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Excellent point.
The answer, of course, is that people with available capital don’t need to borrow money to buy a car, or pay off their credit card debt in low monthly installments. QED
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Well, thank the gods that it’s BoingBoing and not a news site.
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There is truth in what you say, but it is not a zero sum situation with a finite amount of caring available to go round. Concern about GMO food, concern about animal treatment, concern about antibiotics in feed, concern about environmental consequences of factory farming, are not mutually exclusive. Everyone comes to food concerns with a different focus which can all contribute something.
I eat meat myself, and I am fully aware of how it gets to my plate, but many people choose to ignore how it ends up neatly wrapped in nearly blood-free packaging in the supermarket. Changing attitudes about food is all about weaning ourselves away from the idea that all that matters is low prices (a corporate concern), and accepting that responsible practices carry a monetary cost, but are offset by the obvious benefits. We spend a much smaller proportion of our budgets on food now than ever before. We should begin educating all to understand the reasons for, and negative consequences of, that low price. It’s a different way of framing the self-interest argument.
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The really weird thing is that it has nothing to do with self reliance: everyone did it back then because otherwise your shoes got stuck in your rubber boots.
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The government doesn’t want to encourage credit card debt and doesn’t need to encourage car ownership. In either case, maybe deducting the interest payments on a typical CC or auto loan wouldn’t make any difference on most tax returns, i.e. wouldn’t be enough to push itemized deductions above the standard deduction?
kith and kin
Etymology
Literally, albeit archaically, friends (“kith”) and family (“kin”).
Kith and kine
Etymology
Literally, friends (“kith”) and cattle (“kine”). Compare Latinate capital and chattel, which also use “cow” to mean “property”,
I thought so, so I don’t know how someone could claim that BB “flipped it” to make it look like her immediate family benefited.
The title read Ernst’s family which is the same as Kin.
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Sheldon who?
In other words, he has no general recognition that would be of interest to most of BB’s readers, even though the Times has been covering him. Ernst, OTOH, gave a hypocritical (and freakishly uncanny) rebuttal to the SOTU Address – very high profile, ya know?
Anyway, BB has many, many posts about various forms of abuse and overreach by Obama, who is – gasp! – a Democrat.
ETA: It also provides regular coverage of videos produced by Reason TV, an outfit funded (last I heard) by the ultra-conservative Koch bros. Methinks you barketh up the wrong conifer.
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Narrow streets
breed narrow minds
and care for kin
but not for kind
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By the by, I think the whole bread bag thing is bullshit. I have never seen a farm kid that didn’t have a pair of rubber boots or galoshes. Her claim is designed to elicit maximum empathy from the gullible who like to believe that farmers are poor but honest.
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Well, it’s a disingenuous claim: back in the 1970’s bread bags were a layer between the shoe and the boot, to aid putting on and taking off. It had nothing to do with affluence.
Yeah, I grew up near Dubuque. I write from experience.
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