{"id":62250,"date":"2025-12-31T09:59:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:59:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62250"},"modified":"2025-12-31T09:59:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T14:59:20","slug":"affordability-the-next-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=62250","title":{"rendered":"Affordability: The Next Scam"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author:\u00a0 R. Alan Harrop, PH.D.\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The leftist Democrats are always looking for some issue, real or not, that they hope will appeal to voter\u2019s emotions and return them to political power so that they can continue the destruction of America. Apparently, \u201caffordability\u201d will be used in the 2026 election year. As is the case in all these political scams, the reality is much different than the picture they want to present.<\/p>\n

Look at the recent mayoral race in New York City. Not only was affordability the key issue of the Mandani campaign, but he actually presented no<\/u> solutions that any sensible economist would say that could solve the problem. Why? Because the communist ideas of price controls, government owned retail stores, and taxing the rich have never worked and will never do so. Free market capitalism is the only system that has ever been shown to improve wealth and standard of living of the people. The troubling issue is why so many gullible people continue to buy into the communist lies.<\/p>\n

As in most instances of Leftist propaganda, the youth and those looking to the government for solutions to their problems are the people most easily duped. This is the reason the Leftists have always wanted to lower the voting age and import more immigrants–they can place them on welfare programs and make them wards of the state.<\/p>\n

One of the few advantages of getting older is the historical perspective one gains from having lived through various economic conditions. Take for instance mortgage rates. The current mortgage rate around 6% is blamed, in part, for the housing affordability problem. Freddie Mack Mortgage Market survey started tracking the 30-year mortgage rate in 1971, which at that time was 7.3%. The rate went as high as 18.5% in 1981. The average rate from 1971 to the present is 7.8%.\u00a0 The lowest rates ever recorded were in 2021 at 2.8%; which quickly jumped to 8% during the Biden administration. The abnormally low mortgage rates of 2021 were an aberration not likely to be seen again. These low rates drove up housing prices and expectations, making homes affordable that many people could not have afforded previously.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

There is another issue that needs to be recognized, and that is the idea of living within (preferable slightly below your means). That does not appear to be a value that most young people live by these days. It used to be an American value to live within your income and to save for the future. This was facilitated by the system of paying with cash and or writing checks that required a person to spend no more than was in their checking account. The current digital\/credit card systems hide the reality of what a person is spending. That is the reason credit card debt in the U.S. recently reached an all-time record high of $1.23 trillion!<\/p>\n

Another contributing factor to overspending is family size. The average number of children per household in the 1950\u2019s was 5.6 children, now it is less than 2. The result is that the youth of our country are used to living at a higher standard than we older people experienced as children. For example, my family rarely if ever went to restaurants, never owned a new car, and did not purchase a home until my parents were in their 40\u2019s. Not unusual. Now, the youth of this country are used to having things the older generation never experienced. Drive by a local high school parking lot and observe the number of new or nearly new cars provided to the students by their parents.<\/p>\n

The solution to the affordability issue is encouraging the youth to live within their means, accept the responsibility for their own financial wellbeing, to work hard, reduce or eliminate debt, and save for the future. The Trump economy, if not derailed by the leftist Democrats, will provide more opportunities for the youth to benefit from free enterprise than the failed communist ideology that is being pushed on them could ever do. We must get this message across to our children and grandchildren if we are to continue the economic success of the past 250 years. The idea of voting back in office the Democrats who are responsible for the highest inflation since the 1970\u2019s to solve the problem is total lunacy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author:\u00a0 R. Alan Harrop, PH.D.\u00a0\u00a0 The leftist Democrats are always looking for some issue, real or not, that they hope will appeal to voter\u2019s emotions and return them to political power so that they can continue the destruction of America. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[18760,15654],"class_list":["post-62250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-affordability","tag-r-alan-harrop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=62250"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62251,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62250\/revisions\/62251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=62250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=62250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=62250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}