Lightning Rod: It's not A-Rod's fault he got a tax break on his condo

The Weekly Standard ^ | March 14, 2011 | Jim Prevor

[JimPrevor]

New York Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez is in the news again, this time for reasons having nothing to do with Cameron Diaz or baseball.

It seems A-Rod has purchased a spiffy condo in a building newly constructed in Manhattan. The building’s developers took advantage of New York’s 421a program, which is designed to both encourage new construction and provide affordable housing. In exchange for constructing a new building on vacant or under-used land and creating affordable housing in the outer boroughs, developers get their real estate taxes on the improvements phased in over a period of years​—​in this case, ten....

Whatever A-Rod’s individual situation, this incident points to the importance of making sure the budgets used by government at all levels reflect all that government really does and all it really spends. Otherwise the effect of the Tea Party’s fomenting scrutiny of public budgets throughout the land could be to move more expenditures off budget and make it even harder to get a handle on bloated government.

[JimPrevor]

The long and short of it is that if the government wants to build subsidized housing, it is much better for the country if the government explicitly taxes people, including Alex Rodriguez, for that purpose. Then, instead of the statistics’ suggesting that multi-millionaires pay no tax, the numbers will reflect reality​—​and dealing with reality is to no small extent what the Tea Party is all about.

[Carley]

Huh?

[gusty]

The Left’s favorite form of capitalism, Crony Capitalism. Not A-Rod’s fault, but Real Estate Developers in NYC are the Dems biggest contributors.