Smooth_Imagination t1_it9w7r3 wrote on October 22, 2022 at 12:28 AM

Reply to comment by HighKingForthwind in Many countries have a "hidden welfare state" for incumbent homeowners, as governments subsidize homeowners through the tax system. The homeownership welfare state is strongest in the US and other Anglophone countries, but weakest in the Scandinavian countries. by smurfyjenkins

Because calling something welfare, or subsidy, is a politically loaded thing, claiming that one benefits at anothers expense.

By way of example, if I point out that children's school books are subsidised, when I am referring to them being VAT free with that word, subsidy, that's an odd way to frame it. As if they are getting help they don't deserve, especially as no rational person can define the absence of tax as subsidy, which has always been referred to simply as a tax break, for example.

Whereas in this case it seems pretty clear that renters need help, not that home owners don't.

There's no direct connection to home owners getting help and renters not getting it. The shortfall, if one wants to consider it that, comes from the general pot. You could just as easily, and more appropriately, point out legal tax avoidance loopholes where people aren't paying any or very little taxes through off-shore tax havens and various ways of hiding things in trusts, or the tax-free foundations of Billionaires, which have everything as much to do with the tax burden on the renters to make up the shortfall, if not more, because that is the class accumulating properties pushing up demand, which feeds onto the house sale price, which loops back around to the average rents that landlords can charge even on a property that long ago paid for its purchase.