We used to have something like your real estate pirates in Michigan, but they weren't professionals who did it for a living, at least not around here. Our local pirates were mostly amateurs who had a little money to play with. When property taxes were delinquent for the third year, the pirates would buy up the tax lien from the state. Then the owner had another year or two to pay them back with interest or they would lose their property. They almost always paid the lien off in time to keep their land but, in the old days, that wasn't usually the case.
During the Great Depression, which lasted a decade or two longer around here than it did in the rest of the country, a lot of people just abandoned their land and moved away. Much of this land was originally bought from the state for pennies an acre by the lumber barons. After they cut all the trees, they had no further use for the land, so they either let it go back for taxes or sold it cheap to homesteaders. A lot of this land never was suitable for farming and, when times got tough, many of the homesteaders packed it in and moved to the cities down below. Eventually, the state got most of its land back and paid the counties a "swamp tax" of ten dollars an acre in lieu of the taxes they would have gotten from the private owners. The plan was that the state would re-sell the land when the economy improved but, by the time that happened, there was a lot of interest in keeping the land in public ownership for hunting and other recreational purposes. Probably about half of the land in Northern Michigan is still owned by the state or federal government, and it's a big draw for the tourist trade, so there is little interest in privatizing it. Because some of this state land had been already sold, it's kind of a pitch patch of private and public land in some areas. Currently, the state is trying to consolidate its holdings by selling off some of the isolated tracts and buying pieces that are either contiguous or surrounded by other state land.
Where was I? Oh yeah, at some point they developed the policy of selling the tax liens to private citizens, but they changed that a few years ago. Now they just confiscate the property and sell it at auction, but first they offer it to local governments at the minimum bid price in case they want to make a park or something out of it. During the recent economic downturn, some significant pieces of property were taken that way, but I think most of it was bought by people who had a use for it. During the Great Depression there were few buyers like that, which is why the state ended up with most of the tax reverted land.
Like you, I used to believe that it was kind of unethical to make money by any means other than useful, productive labor, but I'm not so sure about that anymore. Most of the good old fashioned trades like farming, manufacturing, and retail sales have become so competitive that the small operators have been forced out of business. I read somewhere that half of the small businesses fail in the first year, and the other half fail in the second year, or something like that. Since the paper mill closed down, I have made more money sitting on my ass than I ever made working for a living. I didn't ask for this, they shoved it down my throat, so I figured that I might as well make the most of it. When I want to do something useful or productive, I do it on my own time, which is better in some ways. I still believe that there is something wrong with a system that pays you more for not working than for working, but it's not my system, it's theirs. I didn't cause it and I can't fix it, so I might as well get my share before it's all gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment