You might just as productively debate the whole concept of the progressive income tax scheme, because the mortgage interest tax deduction is probably the most popular deduction in the code.
Although I don't in fact like the progressive income tax scheme, I don't see why it isn't possible to critique this aspect of it while supporting the concept at large.
I generally don't agree with your premise, that it's unfair to advantage homeowners in the tax code. I think society as a whole benefits from increases in home ownership (homeowners are stakeholders in neighborhoods). I think the tax code can either be simple or effective.
You are free to disagree at length with both of those beliefs and I won't fault you for doing so, except that if the best argument you can muster is "no fair, I just want to rent" I may roll my eyes.
But the thing I really wanted to point out is, there are 104905480 things we can debate on HN where a change of perspective might be productive. This isn't one of them; the mortgage interest tax deduction is a psychological pillar of the middle class of the US and eliminating it would be painfully disruptive to huge numbers of voters.
Narcotics will be decriminalized nationwide before we lose deductible mortgage interest, is my prediction. People have strong feelings about drugs, too, but the decision to legalize them or not doesn't change whether they can still afford the cable bill.
"You are free to disagree at length with both of those beliefs and I won't fault you for doing so, except that if the best argument you can muster is "no fair, I just want to rent" I may roll my eyes."
This is fundamentally an issue of the tax code, once again, favoring those who are well off while disadvantaging those who are not.
The mortgage interest deduction is subsiding those who make the choice to reduce their labor mobility; why would we subsidize people who want to reduce their competitiveness in the labor force?
Hopefully the mortgage interest deduction will go the way of ethanol subsidies.
The equivalent UK benefit (MIRAS[1]) was abolished by the Conservative party, which out of the two main parties would be the right wing party of home ownership. It can happen ...
High levels of home ownership causes long term economic harm by preventing people from moving around in response to better job offers etc. More importantly the mortgage tax credit simply increases home prices vs. making them more affordable. The reality is it's wildly understood as a bad idea economically, but it's so popular it's simply being chipped away by capping it and not indexing the cap to inflation.
Higher taxes because I choose to pay other people for housing for the rest of my life? Huh?