Diversity and the Debtor Nation
By • 2/22/08 |
I’ve long suspected that the spectacular increase in Americans’ level of debt is one of the consequences of our nation’s shifting demographics. We’re spending more and more money, more than we have, to escape diversity. I just came across a 2005 article by law professor Elizabeth Warren and her daughter Amelia Warren Tyagi that seems to vindicate my suspicions. Of course, they don’t say exactly that diversity is bankrupting us, but that appears to be the real message, distorted though it is by the code of political correctness.
Warren and Tyagi cite the usual alarming statistics about Americans’ level of debt. The number of families filing for bankruptcy quintupled between the early 1980s and 2005, and the number of home foreclosures tripled. Things have only gotten worse in the years since: home foreclosures increased by 75 percent from 2006 to 2007 alone.
The usual explanation of increasing American debt is that we’re wasting our money on luxury items. Warren and Tyagi show that explanation’s all wrong though: we’re spending the same amount or less on clothes, cars, and appliances as we were in the late 1970s.
It turns out that what is really driving Americans into debt is the cost of living in a decent school district. Home prices have, of course, been soaring: the average mortgage payment on homes has increased by over 69 percent over the past generation. What’s the reason for the increase? According to Warren and Tyagi, the most important factor in the price of a home is the quality of the school district it’s in.
I think we all have an idea of the demographics of good school districts. Warren and Tyagi talk about parents’ fretting over “news stories about kids who can’t read, classrooms without textbooks, and drug dealers and gang violence in school corridors.” Some races are more prone to illiteracy, gang violence, and drug dealing than others.
What seems to be happening then is that, as diversity increases, so does the proportion of lousy schools. My conclusion is that whites are engaging in a bidding war for homes in the ever-shrinking number of majority-white neighborhoods, and massive debt is the inevitable result.
Debt isn’t the only negative consequence of rising home prices. Tyagi points out in an interview that having a child is the best predictor of bankruptcy today. The enormous cost of having a child is sure to lower white fertility. Tyagi also says that home prices are the reason why more and more wives have to get jobs as well. Indeed, the articles I’ve cited are based on Warren and Tyagi’s book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers are Going Broke.
Everyone says that diversity is enriching us, but in fact it’s driving us to bankruptcy. Such paradoxes are all too familiar in our inverted world.
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An interesting graph on the topic:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/08/26/weekinreview/27leon_graph2.large.gif
Prices are especially insane on the west coast. Seattle, for instance. But Seattle is a white and Asian city with relatively few blacks and Mestizos.
“The enormous cost of having a child is sure to lower white fertility.”
Exactly. Whereas the “improvident races” don’t care. The cost of living does not have as much impact on them, I imagine.
By on 2/22/08 at 9:31 pm
Hran,
That’s a good point about Seattle. My theory would predict that housing prices ought to be especially high in areas with a lot of non-Asian minorities. If they’re not, that’s a problem for me.
I didn’t think I’d need to spell out why I thought the rising cost of living in a good school district would have a greater effect on white fertility than on that of other races. I can see I was right.
By on 2/22/08 at 9:58 pm
When Thomas Malthus formulated his classic theory in the early 19th Century, he held that the low English fertility at that time vis-a-vis the enormous level of Anglo-Saxon fertility in the USA was due to the lack of resources amongst the vast bulk of English in procuring the means to marry and raise a family. How ironic that 200 years later tat the USA should be so ‘filled’ as 19th century England!
By on 2/23/08 at 10:47 am
I did a correlation using Census data between a state’s average home price and the percent of its population that was foreign born. The correlation is .79, which is extremely high. This doesn’t of itself validate my thesis, but it does prove that there is a strong relationship between diversity and home prices, and disprove Hran’s suggestion that these two things may have nothing to do with each other.
By on 2/23/08 at 11:04 pm
A correlation between living in a decent school district and having big mortgage payments is pretty much what would be expected. People will take risks - including incurring massive debt - in order to escape the consequences of “diversity” politics.
Apart from the usual suspects, the most vociferous supporters of diversity are the well-heeled liberals who can buy their way out of any adverse impact on their own lives or the lives of their children.
By on 2/24/08 at 10:32 am
“Prices are especially insane on the west coast. Seattle, for instance. But Seattle is a white and Asian city with relatively few blacks and Mestizos.”
“That’s a good point about Seattle. My theory would predict that housing prices ought to be especially high in areas with a lot of non-Asian minorities. If they’re not, that’s a problem for me.”
There are some Whites, myself being one, that do not want to live among Asians any more than any other non-Whites. We are home-shopping now and the presence of Asians in the neighborhood would veto the area for me. I would pay a premium price just to avoid them, regardless of how they perform in school. Maybe some of the Seattle residents feel the same as I do.
By on 4/3/08 at 4:29 pm
Actually, regarding Seattle: I lived there for two years very recently. There are huge, rapidly increasing populations of blacks (including Africans) and hispanics and every other kind of third world ethnic group throughout the region, but particularly in the area known as South Seattle. The city and region are becoming very congested very quickly and this is mostly due to foreign immigration—both legal and illegal—as opposed to the influx of Californians as in the past. If you make a trip to IKEA in South Seattle, you’ll see that a HUGE proportion of the customers are foreign-born non-whites. Property and rental prices in South Seattle are lower, whereas housing prices in more predominantly white North Seattle are becoming increasingly exhorbitant through increased demand throughout the region in addition to probably white flight from South Seattle. My visits to South Seattle were comparatively “alienating” and for the most part I would not want to live there.
By on 4/4/08 at 12:38 pm
Well we have it the same here in the UK when it comes to living in a postcode within the catchment area of a good school. Families are literally fighting for houses to give their kids the best chance in life but many have come to soften the burden house prices by opting for a offset mortgage to reduce their monthly repayments.
Do you have them in the US?
By on 5/4/08 at 3:20 pm
Also the longer commute from the white neighborhood to get to the job in the not so white area, more gas, maintenance costs, etc.
By Henry Stanton on 2/22/08 at 8:27 pm