Lather, Rinse, Poison, Repeat

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Some experts believe the policies that led to the 2008 real estate collapse are still in place leaving us as vulnerable to a real estate bubble as before. They are mistaken.  We’re worse off than before because now we have newer and even stupider ideas to help preferred minorities qualify for home loans such as counting all incomes in the household toward the loan.

The problem was explained in 2010 by Glenn Reynolds:

“The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.”

And that’s the best-case scenario, when the government isn’t actively working to destroy middle-class values by subsidizing bad decisions and penalizing good (but politically incorrect) decisions.

The divide between the wealthy and the wretched ever widens and Liberals cannot fathom why.  It’s because of Berg’s 21st Law: Liberal Policies Destroy Liberal Values.

Joe Doakes

That one’s almost beyond mere “law.