A Stitch in Haste

Angry Bear:

Just imagine someone in my next [sic] of the woods (Los Angeles) who purchased a house just before 2000, enjoyed living in it as (s)he paid interest to the bank on the mortgage, and really enjoyed the fact that the value of the house increased from say $500,000 to $700,000. And supposed the city decided that Amgen should be allowed to not only purchase this house for $500,000 but also deduct the market rental rate for the property for the past five years. Would Amgen even be required to rebate the interest on this person's mortgage?

The only folks in the world who might think such a scheme approximated fair market value are those Social Security privatization types who write for the Club for Growth.

My response at that blog:

Actually the far better analogy between eminent domain and Social Security would be if a person were required, by law, to take out a 30-year mortgage that he may or may not want, pay an above-market interest rate, make payments for 29 1/2 years, then die before receiving title to the house, and have the bank say that they still owned the house and his estate therefore will receive zero equity.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why these people are so utterly terrified of voluntary partial privatization -- is it the "voluntary" or the "privatization" or both?

In the end, though, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that they are indeed motivated by fear, not by concern for the elderly or the working poor or the economy.