The home mortgage interest deduction should be eliminated in the United States

In the last round I refuted my opponent’s points and then offered my concluding statements as to why we should not eliminate the MID. My opponent has responded by refuting my refutations, incorporating a new point into her argument, and restating her conclusion without even addressing my main point. As far as rebuttals, we are at a point where we are going back and fourth about mostly small details that do not make the difference in this argument, so I will offer quick and simple rebuttals and then move on to my main argument Housing Prices I’m not quite sure what Pro was trying to assert here other then housing prices would not fall as much as I said so. But even she states that they would decline slightly. This is supported by every study that has been shown, and is the point of this argument. Economic Equality Higher income earners will be impacted more then lower income earners. Agreed. Americas Net Worth Pro states my assertion that these cuts “would be aimed at those who lost the most” is false. The people who lost the most throughout this recession are homeowners. The MID would directly raise taxes on homeowners. There is nothing false about that. Pro states that my conclusion of net worth equality is a logical fallacy. Greater economic equality in net worth is a good thing in my opinion. But we should focus on achieving it by increasing the net worth of lower income Americans, not by reducing the net worth of wealthy Americans. Home values are a matter of perception. You can not take home values from the wealthy and give it to the poor. That is why lower class Americans have nothing to gain from a reduced net worth of wealthy Americans. This is not a logical fallacy. Financial Responsibility First of all I find it odd that Pro makes her case to be about how little the MID benefits most Americans, then gives us an example of a couple that suffers financially by losing the benefits of it. Aside from that, her entire argument here misses the point I made in the previous round. Irresponsible Americans will be irresponsible regardless of weather the MID is in place. In her own example the couple found everything they needed in the $150,000 home, yet they decided to go for the bigger and more expensive home. If only part of that decision was because of the MID then the rest of that decision was clearly irresponsibility. I also find it interesting that Pro argues that home prices will not be affected while demonstrating how the MID can play a role in a couple deciding to spend more on there housing. Obviously if the MID can effect a couples decision on how much to spend, then eliminating it will cause them to spend less which will naturally impact housing prices. Income and Racial Segregation. Pro makes an entirely new argument here that I fail to see the relevance of. She states that eliminating the MID would lead to “a decrease in racial segregation and social cohesion”. It would be wonderful if we could all just get along, but this has nothing to do with tax policy. Resolution I would like to point out that Pro again stated in the last round that we could phase out the MID to minimize the consequences. I brought up twice in this debate that according to the resolution we are talking about short term elimination of the MID and Pro has not addressed it. This point should be considered by the readers. Summary Pro and I agree that eliminating the MID would increase tax revenue, impact higher income earners more then lower income earners, and cause a slight decline in housing prices. But I have concluded each round with the point that eliminating the MID was not the best way to achieve the desired results. Pro has not addressed this point throughout the debate. In the last round I showed why the MID is not a give away. Pro did not refute. I showed why the MID does not cost the US anything. Pro did not refute. I then stated that if we want to increase tax revenue then we should not do it only on homeowners. Pro did not refute. To make this concept even clearer I will illustrate further: Suppose we have two people, one is a homeowner and one is not, and each makes $40,000yr. Even if we accept Pros downward estimations, eliminating the MID would cause this homeowners taxes to increase by $91 and lose a small amount of his home value, while the non-homeowner does not pay or lose anything. Now some would make an argument that increasing taxes more on wealthier individuals is justified but how do you justify increasing taxes on some people in the same income group and not others? Why should being a homeowner cause your taxes to increase? I have also stated that an across the aboard tax increase would get us the same results without singling out homeowners, but instead it would ask everybody to share in the burden. If economic equality is the issue, then we can raise the percentage higher on wealthy individuals. Either way it is still better then targeting one specific group of people that are found in all income levels. Conclusion To decide that the MID should be eliminated is to decide that doing so is the best course of action. Yet Pro has not shown why eliminating the MID is the best course of action and I have shown how other options would be better by giving us the same results while being more fair. So once again if we want to increase tax revenue, we should not do it in a way that only targets homeowners.