Continuing through some old files, I came across this eloquent statement in the minutes of an executive committee meeting for the Robert Schalkenbach Foundation:
"Middle income homebuyers, especially, are having to pay a lot more for their homes because of the inflation in land prices. They are having to pay more for their financing, too, because financing also reflects land prices.
What land speculators can get for their land, they can get because of the enormous expenditures of tax money to make that land usable.
I do not think the American conscience is sufficiently sensitive to be aroused because land speculators get rich at the expense of the government, because the public has come to regard the government as a cow to be milked. It would, therefore, be unwise to place the emphasis on how speculators get rich at the government's expense. Rather ... we should emphasize that the homebuyers are the ones who have to pay, have to dig deep into their savings to pay speculators more for the land, not because the speculators did anything to earn a higher price, but because taxpayers spent millions to make it better."
-- Perry Prentice, 3/5/1965
California, with Prop 13, should take note. Anyone who wants a more stable economy should take note. Anyone who would like to see the cost of living for ordinary people be stabilized and reduced should take note.
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