Amen, Michelle
Ms. Malkin is right on target:
Where’s the fairness in forcing prudent homeowners and renters to subsidize people who bought overpriced houses and rescue the banks who lent to them?
Tellingly, Obama chose Ft. Myers to drum up support for his wealth redistributionism. The area has been one of the hardest hit by foreclosures, as the president was quick to point out. But many of those homes are second or third homes and investment properties. And low housing prices are not a catastrophe for everyone. They’ve created opportunities for Americans who haven’t been able to buy in an artificially inflated market. The median sales price of a home in the Ft. Myers area fell 50 percent to $106,900, from $215,200 in December 2007. Bargain-priced home sales are up 146 percent from a year ago.
It’s sacrilegious to say it in the Age of Obama, but it needs to be said: Home ownership is not an entitlement. Credit is not a civil right. Your property-value preservation is not my problem. Can I get an “Amen!?”
Do people even know what rights are anymore? Do they realize that we have “certain inalienable rights” and then we have “civil” or “alienable” rights? Do they understand that civil rights (that is, rights established by law) are subject to change when the law changes? Do they understand that rights of either sort come with responsibilities (and the failure to meet those responsibilities may, in a society which is governed by non-arbitrary laws, result in the suspension of those rights)?
More to the point, do they understand that evil which was done to their ancestors does not automatically accrue to them all the privileges which they have otherwise not gained through their own endeavors?
Some of my ancestors left their homes and fled to another country to avoid a “kill at will” order from their reigning monarch. Others of the same family were not so fortunate. Does this mean the country in question owes me for past wrongs done to my family? Let us imagine for a moment that it does. Using this logic, is there any group of people who should not receive compensation for past wrongs?
Our current President often says something along the lines of “It is time to put the past behind us.” Would that he believed his statement half as much as I do.
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4 Comments, Comment or Ping
Chet
11 February 2009, 20:07, UTC
I’m not saying I disagree, and certainly an intelligent homeowner relief program would discern between primary residences and speculation properties – or perhaps limit the mortgage renegotiations to one per family – but if Michelle Malkin is willing to call home prices “artificially inflated”, that would seem to grant the basic point that the free market was not functioning correctly.
Regardless of what’s a right or not, there’s a practical argument that millions of American families paying $700,000 mortgages on $250,000 homes constitutes a great economic waste and depresses the economy. Why might prudent homeowners be asked to “bailout” others? Because the job they save could be their own.
Rob
14 February 2009, 6:51, UTC
While I do not know all the factors that have been at work in the latest “housing crisis,” several that are front and center in my thinking are 1) the desire for what I call starter mansions = far more house than is really needed or prudent and 2) lending institutions approving loans for far more than people can actually afford.
I realize that living in a society means that what I do has an impact on others = I do not live and move in a vacuum, and so what the people and institutions I’ve mentioned does indeed have an impact on me and my livelihood, as Chet is suggesting. But there’s still something within me that recoils at the thought of prudent people being punished for the imprudence of others. Heaven keeps looking better and better all the time!
Michael Woodring
14 February 2009, 22:18, UTC
Rob,
Indeed, m’sieu, heaven (for those of us who believe in it) does hold appeal when all earthly appeals to reason and non-greed seem to fall upon deaf ears.
Chet
16 February 2009, 15:17, UTC
But there’s still something within me that recoils at the thought of prudent people being punished for the imprudence of others.
And yet collective punishment is widely recognized as a useful disciplinary tool.