What we know won't solve the housing crisis: Trump's 50 year mortgages

 So...Trump recently proposed a solution to the housing affordability crisis: longer mortgages, more debt servitude! Yay! Where did we hear this before?

So a little background from my perspective. As some of you know, I'm trying to write a book about my ideas, and often times, those ideas are expressed here, and this blog sometimes serves as a springboard for me to talk about these things. I recently focused on student loans and how we created that crisis, and it was the same crap Trump is pushing now. The idea that rather than the government do something to make stuff more affordable or accessible, we should just trap people in tons of debts because blah blah blah "personal responsibility" pay your own way. 

So yeah, to discuss how it works, well, you have 50 year mortgages on your house instead of 30 year ones. What does this mean? Well, it means you pay about 10% less in monthly payments, and around twice as much in interest. I've seen various numbers, but this is generally what I see:

30 year mortgage on a $400k house: $2200-2500 a month

50 year mortgage: $2000-2300 a month

30 year total interest: $400k ($800k total paid)

50 year total interest: $800k ($1.2 million total paid)

See the problem? It slightly lowers mortgage payments in the short term, allowing interest to screw you long term. And let's talk about how long 50 years is. If you buy now at age 30ish, you're gonna be paying this off until you're LITERALLY 80! Basically, you pay it off just in time to die and have it be thrown back on the market.

And people also wonder well who assumes the debt if you die? Are your kids going to have to pay this mortgage? To paraphrase the daily show on this topic, man, kids are gonna be wanting to get OUT of grandma's will! I mean, this is insane. Who is this for?

Well, let's be blunt. It's for the banks. It's for the owners of the mortgages. This isn't intended to help the people. This is intended to help the wealthy. The banks. Again, this is the student debt crisis all over again. Make people pay loans to get something they need and throw them into debt servitude. Then we go on about how they agreed to the terms and "if you take out a loan you should pay it back" whenever we talk about bailing the people out. It's intended to keep people in perpetual debt slavery. They want you to be poor, they want you to be desperate, they wanna keep you tied to unfulfilling job you hate just to pay the bills. Again, these guys want the polar opposite of what I want. Remember, my own ideas are a foil to Reaganism and that small government ideology. I want to free people from wage slavery and debt servitude, and these guys wanna drag you deeper into it. Screw this idea. It's terrible. It helps no one but the wealthy. Trump is not a working class hero. Although next I will discuss a policy of his that he's floating that I actually like....