2 weeks Ago
Having family near Athol, I read the column published in the Athol Daily News: “Wall Street landlords are coming to our ZIP code” [Nov 20]. While I believe in free enterprise, I simultaneously frown on usury (ultra-high loan rates) and monopolies by a few select banks, big corporations, or other entities who now seek to gobble up and take away (or at least significantly reduce) one of our fundamental freedoms: that of the right to own private property or land. My late dad grew up on a farm that had been in the family for 100 years after his passing.
I vividly remember my dad telling me: “Jimmy, one thing about land, they aren’t making any more of it!” How true! I don’t fault Wall Street investors for playing with the stock market. That is a glorified casino. There are winners and losers.
I just don’t want America to be a “Land of all renters,” basically enslaved to a Wall Street entity as a common landlord who could be worse than a dictator. We need to build smaller houses. I get sick of the phrase “starter home.
” I know people who bought their home in 1972 and they are still living in it. The times of fancy mansions that only house a husband and wife and either no kids (or kids who have left the nest) is a foolish “keeping up with the Joneses.” Let’s preserve and be prudent with land while we still can.
James A. Marples Longview, Texas.
