March 1, 2003

THE MYTH OF PROPERTY OWNERSHIP

Several years ago, in spring of 1985, Mark and I traveled to China on a closely monitored tour with a guide who doubled as a guard. We were enchanted by this picturesque glimpse of agrarian life, watching blue-pajamaed farmers cultivate their rice fields with water buffalo to carry the load. (We were less enchanted by watching men and women clear rubble from a construction site by hand with brute force--no backhoes or cranes that might take away a laborer’s job.) We were also very much aware that we were seeing only what they wanted us to see, and that our guide had been selected as much for her loyalty to Communist Party policy as for her knowledge of tourist facts.

Nevertheless, one of the men in our group took the opportunity to spread the gospel of capitalism, talking to our guide about how wonderful it is to live in a country where people can own their own land. "You live in housing that is owned by the government," he told her, "but in America, we own our own homes. We can buy our own land and no one can take it away from us unless we choose to sell it."

"Not quite," I disagreed quietly.

He looked at me perplexedly. "What do you mean?" he asked. "I own my own home!"

"No you don’t," I told him.

"Well, okay, when I finish paying off the mortgage I’ll own it," he acknowledged, thinking he knew where I was headed.

"No you won’t," I persisted.

Now he was angry at me. "What are you talking about? I pay off the mortgage, I get a title free and clear. It belongs to me. No one can take it away from me, and no one can tell me what I can and can’t do with it."

"What happens if you don’t pay your real estate taxes?" I asked him.

"Well, naturally, it would be forfeited," he admitted sheepishly. "But that would never happen."

"So you don't really own your land, the government does," I explained to him. "The fact is," I concluded, "we don’t have private property in America. The government owns all the land. Real estate taxes are really the rent we pay to the government for the privilege of using the land we have paid for. And if we don’t pay that rent, the land will be confiscated by the government."

The man rolled his eyes angrily and turned away from me, his opportunity to change China lost.

Okay, perhaps I was a little harsh, and perhaps I shouldn’t have aired our "dirty linen" in front of a Chinese communist whom this man was trying to convert to capitalism. But I wanted to make a point: we aren’t that much better off than the communists, if we allow the government to limit our rights to own and control our personal property.

I am particularly aware of this limitation right now, when local governments everywhere are trying to make up their revenue deficits by increasing real estate taxes, sometimes by as much as 25 percent in a single year! This insidious policy was first used by carpetbagging northerners to quietly and legally confiscate land from the southerners after the Civil War, when cash was sparse and plantations could be stolen with the price of a landowner’s real estate tax. It continued into the twentieth century, when family mansions had to be abandoned or converted into hospitals, libraries, or old folks’ homes because the owners could no longer afford confiscatory property taxes. Many fine examples of Victorian architecture were torn down and replaced by subdivisions as a result of onerous taxation. And it is occurring again today, as local authorities eye yet another way to milk (and bilk) not just the rich, but anyone who has the gumption to buy a home and pay a mortgage.

Through careful investment and wise judgment, Mark and I paid off the mortgage on our lakefront Winter Park home several years ago, thinking that we would then have a true family homestead, a place our children and grandchildren could return to for decades to come. But lakefront owners pay a tax premium in Winter Park, and our real estate taxes have more than tripled in the dozen years we have lived there. We now pay more in taxes than it would cost to rent a good-sized house! And it is more than likely that those taxes will continue to escalate. The odds that we will be able to remain in our "fully paid for" home after we retire are practically nil. We have paid a pretty penny for this home, but we don't really own it.

Oddly, when Mayor Mark Bloomberg opted to raise New York City taxes by 25 percent earlier this year, almost no one showed up at the courthouse discussion to oppose the bill. It passed easily. Perhaps it is because most New Yorkers rent rather than own, and thus think real estate taxes are a good way of getting back at the landlord. Or perhaps, like our Chinese busmate, they simply don’t understand the insidiousness of the collectivist mentality. But I simply don’t understand the willingness of Americans to tax themselves into the poorhouse.

In his original version of the Declaration of Independence Thomas Jefferson listed our inalienable rights as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of property," echoing John Locke. But his Congressional colleagues quickly edited those rights to "life, liberty" and the innocuous "pursuit of happiness." Congress has been subtly and determinedly undermining our right to private property since before the nation was born. It is a trend that must be stopped.

-- Jo Ann Skousen

email: jaskousen@mskousen.com

Return to the Index of Jo Ann's Odds & Trends articles:
Return to Index of Articles