Quote Originally Posted by Breukelen advocaat
Jimmy "Howdy Doody" Carter's pet cause organization, Habitat for Humanity, sends me letters asking for donations. Hello, I don't own a house, or even a co-op. Their letters clearly have my apartment number on the envelopes. Next they'll want swimming pools.
Breuk, I generally find you an intelligent man, and I know you respect me, too. But your logic here scares me. The idea that just because you don't own property yourself means you shouldn't donate to causes that work against poverty/housing is just wacky. You probably also say things like "I shouldn't have to pay school taxes because I don't have a child." A lot of people believe this, too, sadly, but, thankfully, our Supreme Court had a deeper understanding, recognizing that everyone benefits from an educated population and not just those with children.

It's precisely the same way with helping provide housing. People other than homeowners benefit from that in the same way. In lowered crime. In lowered social spending on the recipients. In moving those people into situations where they can become solid, contributing citizens instead of welfare cases. I think in your heart you know this. You just don't like Jimmy and would be violently opposed to anything you associated with him, which is fine and at least more logical than your other reasoning. My intuition tells me that, as a proud New Yorker, at least a fraction of your dislike for Carter, too, stems from an assumption that Southern-sounding people are less intelligent than northeasterners. Perhaps I'm wrong; I hope I am. But I've run up against far too many New Yorkers who assume lack of intellect when they hear a Southern dialect not to be suspicious about this. (I thoroughly enjoy disabusing them of that notion, as you can probably imagine.)

If you don't want to give to anti-poverty causes or causes you associate with Mr. Carter, you certainly shouldn't do that. Just think about basing your motivation on not doing so on something other than the fact that you're not a homeowner yourself.