One of the most common trends in the United States these days is for the elite to embrace the language of the left to turn people against good things that help them. Consider the New York Times and its case against the thirty-year fixed mortgage.
According to the New York Times, it fosters inequality. It is unfair. And its unfairness is…wait for it…no seriously, wait for it… the thirty year mortgage is unfair because it gives homeowners an advantage over banks.
No seriously. That’s what the Times claims.
That mortgage has been so common for so long that it can be easy to forget how strange it is. Because the interest rate is fixed, homeowners get to freeze their monthly loan payments for as much as three decades, even if inflation picks up or interest rates rise. But because most U.S. mortgages can be paid off early with no penalty, homeowners can simply refinance if rates go down. Buyers get all of the benefits of a fixed rate, with none of the risks.
“It’s a one-sided bet,” said John Y. Campbell, a Harvard economist who has argued that the 30-year mortgage contributes to inequality. “If inflation goes way up, the lenders lose and the borrowers win. Whereas if inflation goes down, the borrower just refinances.”
The result? As the Times notes, “the 30-year mortgage contributes to inequality.”
Part of their argument is that it puts homeowners in an advantageous position against lenders. Part of their argument is that some people now have low-interest rate mortgages and new homeowners do not.
People who were alive in the seventies may remember mortgages above ten percent, still better than today. But, the Times argues that homeowners with great rates won’t sell and open the market to new buyers because rates are so high.
Except, consider that as the Times is running its elitist screed under the guise of faux populism, the Wall Street Journal has actual reporting. The Boomer generation is about to start divesting their houses and taking the equity as they downsize. It will be slow and over time, but also a lot of younger people want to live in more urban areas in smaller houses.
In other words, the situation is complicated. But what is not complicated is that the housing market in the United States has provided unparalleled access to equity for many Americans over time. That the New York Times thinks this is bad says more about the Times than the 30-year mortgage. It is the financial industry using the Times to complain.
I bring up this story, because it is the trend. We are all told that whatever the rich, white, secular elite of America think is the worst thing ever is the worst thing ever. It is why the Washington Post can suddenly become the American mouthpiece of Hamas.
Over the weekend, the Post lamented the plight of poor Palestinian Americans at a time the FBI says violence against Jews has soared 400%. But the Post is controlled now by terrorist sympathizers who are overwhelmingly white progressives from elite institutions.
The Times, which has lamented inequality for years, can suddenly be spun up into outrage over the 30-year mortgage because it puts the homeowners of America in a better position than the elite want.
Too often, the elite, through the news media, champions their cause du jour and insists we must all care very much. The elite hate Trump so they’ll focus on him and ignore the pro-Hamas marches in America. They’ll focus on his authoritarianism and ignore their own. They’ll make boys in girls sports the victims and the marginalized girls the villains.
It is both why no one trusts the press anymore and also why so many simply cannot believe anyone anymore. It has perverse outcomes like this one.
She didn’t trust the government. She didn’t trust the news. She didn’t know whom to trust, so Kathy Nichols eased into the armchair facing her psychic.
“What comes up in my future?” she asked.
It is a damning but unsurprising indictment of the American press that Ms. Nichols trusts no one except her astrologer. It’s the outcome of an American press corps that is no longer a free press. It is, instead, a press captive to its contempt of half the country tangled in its obsession with narrative over fact.
