Counter-Currents
A New Diversity Tax Arrives Today for American Homebuyers
Beau Albrecht
2,337 words
In Ayn Rand’s celebrated novel Atlas Shrugged, the enigmatic pirate Ragnar Danneskjöld said the following about a fictional crook with good public relations:
I’m after a man whom I want to destroy. He died many centuries ago, but until the last trace of him is wiped out of men’s minds, we will not have a decent world to live in . . . Robin Hood.
There’s a good bit more where that came from. Although the statement sounds a bit odd, especially given that pirates, too, are quite often fictional crooks with good public relations — including Ragnar himself — I’m beginning to get it now. This is especially becoming clear in light of a modification to the terms of new mortgages that was apparently ordered by the Bidet junta. Our fake administration chose to drop this prezzie on us effective the first of May — the loveliest day in the merry month.
What is the point of it?
This change in mortgages is documented in a Newsweek article, “Biden Raises Costs for Homebuyers With Good Credit to Help Risky Borrowers,” which was published recently. There are times that I have a pretty good idea of what the inside poop of an article will be just from reading the title, and this is one of them. In fact, it gets right down to business in its first sentence:
Homebuyers with good credit scores will soon be facing higher mortgage fees as the Biden administration seeks to close the racial homeownership gap and get more first-time and low-income buyers through the door.
Other articles pointedly mention race as well. In this instance, it’s rather telling that it refers to “clos[ing] the racial homeownership gap” first, with first-time buyers mentioned only secondarily mentioned (though it’s unclear why this is a priority at all) and low-income buyers apparently in last consideration. Tampering with market forces to achieve class-based goals is somewhat perilous in itself, and depending on the specifics, may be ethically dodgy. That said, if this scheme already has the built-in goal of poverty relief, then what’s the point of bringing race into it?
The fact is that poverty sucks for everyone in the same way. As I said before quite recently, money is the universal solvent. (Only thoroughly indoctrinated Leftist twits would argue that a white homeless veteran is better off than Oprah Winfrey because he has a big duffel bag of white privilege while she’s encumbered with two intersectionality points.) Purposefully making this scheme a racial initiative is therefore a sop to non-white constituencies supporting the Democratic Party. The liberals might think of it as a way of doing a favor for the po’ cullud folx who don’t have a prayer of making it in life without the gummint’s helping hand. But looking at it another way: Who’s on target here?
How it works
I’ll credit Newsweek with giving more information about this than I’ve seen elsewhere:
Starting in May, a new federal rule will upend the current structure of the Loan-Level Price Adjustment (LLPA) matrix. Homebuyers with a good credit score could see their monthly mortgage payment rise by over $60 a month, while riskier borrowers will get more favorable mortgage terms because their fees were reduced.
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The details are still a bit fuzzy. Even the most obscure IRS rules have a document number and can be accessed online so that one can read them for oneself. But unfortunately, under this new scheme, there’s no reference given in order be able to look up the nuts-and-bolts specifics. Moreover, it’s odd that this measure doesn’t have a name. I’m therefore going to call it what it is: a diversity tax.
For another matter, by whose authority was this enacted? Was the diversity tax debated as a bill and voted on by both chambers of Congress? Dollars to donuts (or is it donuts to dollars now?) says it was another diktat of the Bidet junta. Maybe that’s why there’s no mention of the law by name, or of who wrote it. If my assumption is correct, how is Resident Bidet — or more accurately, his wise handlers — getting away with circumventing the normal legislative process as laid out in the Constitution? Oh, yeah — it’s because the globalist wind-up toy and the people pulling his strings are special and above the law.
Most discussions of this scheme emphasize that it’s just a dinky little charge. We don’t have a specific number, but for comparison’s sake let’s round the “over $60 a month” stated above down to an even $60. With a 30-year house note, the raw numbers add up to $21,600. Again, I’m using a rounded figure, so the actual diversity tax is going to total more. Some dinky little charge, eh? That sum is around the ballpark figure for the price of an entry-level new car not long ago, before the Bidet inflation kicked in. So if Joe Sixpack has good credit and closes on a house, the government will then make him start forking it over for the benefit of those who have not-so-good credit — and likely a lot of melanin.
Is it really intended to be a diversity tax?
Now it gets a little interesting. There’s a lot that goes into a credit score, but generally it rates how well one handles debt, and especially if one pays debts on time. Although this wealth transfer scheme is based on credit scores — which will more or less penalize those who are financially prudent — it’s widely understood which racial groups are expected to be its beneficiaries. In fact, this seems to be its major selling point:
Only about 25 percent of homebuyers with Federal Housing Administration loans are people of color, according to the White House. Black and Hispanic people, on average, have fewer savings to use as a down payment on a home and tend to have lower credit scores, according to David Stevens, former CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) and a former FHA commissioner during the Obama administration.
He told Newsweek that this can be attributed to factors like distrust in the banking system or being a first-generation American and that low credit scores can be a significant barrier to homeownership.
But in order for the FHFA to close the gap by bringing down LLPAs for those borrowers, the agency has to compensate for the reduction in borrowing fees by raising the LLPAs of borrowers with higher credit scores, who tend to be white. The average credit score in white communities was 727 in 2021, compared with 667 in Hispanic communities and 627 in Black communities, according to data analyzed by FinMasters, a personal finance blog.
Indeed, just as I discerned merely from reading this article’s title, the goal is to benefit the precious People Of Capitalization — at our expense, of course. The article certainly doesn’t leave us guessing about this.
Are there ways to make home ownership more affordable for the masses, no matter what they look like? Of course! First of all, take away Janet Yellen’s bottle of Viagra so that she’ll quit cranking up the interest rate over at the Federal Reserve. Also, reform the private mortgage insurance (PMI) rules to temporarily make it like it used to be, and not a “fuck you” charge throughout the entire loan. Finally, speculation needs to be discouraged until it stops distorting the market. The house-flippers were bad enough; the Wall Street behemoths are far worse. Although the globalists want to take away our private property and rent it back to us — “you’ll own nothing and be happy” — they can go play leapfrog with a unicorn. When the adults get in charge, we can write a law so that corporations hoarding vast quantities of empty dwellings, hoping to profit by the manipulation of supply, will be taxed until they squeal like piglets.
How is this justified?
In the article there are only a couple of murmurs about how Bidet’s diversity tax on mortgages will affect the middle class. There’s a small amount of hand-wringing about rewarding people who mishandle their finances. Rather brazenly, there’s no ethical issue raised whatsoever about sticking it to white people. Nobody even bothers to make up an excuse. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody’s discussing. So what do we owe these dear darkies for this time?
“Equity” is a notion that’s become popular in Leftist circles, including the Bidet junta. It’s essentially a code word for equality of results. This is a central premise in the writings of the heavily-promoted skintellectual Ibram X. Kendi, whose book How to Be an Antiracist has the details. The diversity tax is being enacted very much in this spirit. Going forward we can expect pretty much all other demands for gibsmedats to use “equity” as a model for justification as well. Again, it’s concerning that this hogwash has become so accepted that nobody even bothers to argue that the diversity tax is necessary because of the pervasive history of blah blah blah.
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The “equity” idea’s central premise is that any disparity between whites and blacks is, without exception, the malicious result of “racism.” Moreover, racially neutral policies aren’t good enough for these poor dears. The only remedy acceptable to them is “anti-racism,” which is a code word for preferential treatment for blacks. Thus far, little attention has been paid to other races in the equation. If demands by everyone else joined the cacophony, it’s entirely possible that the grievance machine would shake apart from the strain.
Note well: To make that anti-white tautology work, the Leftist premise of absolute egalitarianism is crucial. The whole thing stands or falls on this point. If it is admitted that there are significant biological, cultural, or behavioral differences between the races that might affect socioeconomic outcomes, then equality of results is certainly an unrealistic expectation. Other people’s problems, such as black failure, are not our fault. Once this is recognized, this “anti-racism” business will be revealed for the shakedown racket that it is.
Moreover, Dalrock had some brilliant words about the effect of feminism on society in which I’ll take the liberty of loosening their context:
What is too easy to forget is that this is artificial, and therefore requires constant effort to maintain. [Social leveling] didn’t demolish a barrier between two seas and let the water levels adjust; it is a massive pumping operation. Turn off the pumps even for a little bit and reality will come flooding back.
The longer we keep the pumps running, the more the true cost of the operation becomes evident. Most of what [social leveling] gained it did on credit of one sort or another, and these bills are coming due.
Nothing good comes of this sort of thing.
Bidet: Stop picking our pockets!
So, then, what could be causing “the racial homeownership gap” mentioned at the beginning? Cited above, the former Federal Housing Administration commissioner mentioned distrust in the banking system, being a first-generation American, and low credit scores. The first item obviously isn’t Whitey’s fault. The second is an individual personal circumstance which isn’t subject to blame. As for the third, can it be that racial differences in credit scores are really the result of institutionalized this, structural that, the lingering legacy of yada yada yada, and so forth?
The comparison of credit scores listed above is missing a telling demographic detail. The Investopedia article “Average Credit Scores by Race,” which discusses a 2019 dataset, begins with the following summary:
Based on FICO score data, the payment processing company Shift calculated that the median credit score across all Americans was 703 in 2019. That’s within close range of the 701 average for Hispanic consumers. The Asian population enjoyed the highest credit scores, with an average of 745. That was slightly above the average for White Americans, which stood at 734 in 2019. Black Americans registered an average credit score of 677.
Thus Asians are slightly in the lead, followed by whites, with Hispanics significantly below, and blacks coming in last. Interestingly, this basically looks like well-known IQ patterns. It’s obvious how intelligence can be a predictor of financial prudence. Related factors such as time preferences and delayed gratification also should figure into it. Yes, the racial dimension of intelligence is a touchy matter, but the truth hurts. It’s time we get it out into the open.
The Newsweek article doesn’t mention Asians, but it’s clear that high credit scores will mean that they will have to pay the diversity tax in high proportion to their numbers, just like whites. I wonder how much they’ll like having to pay up for Dirty Sanchez and Dindu Nuffin? (For all the Asians out there, you’ll be better off siding with us than siding with the urban orcs and freaks in the Leftist coalition. Make your choice soon!) In any event, making whites and Asians pay more for their mortgages isn’t about making up for a grievous past of blah blah blah, but rather simply penalizes success.
There are Leftists who argue that genes don’t matter, and thus blacks should have the same IQ as everyone else, and the only reason they don’t is that whites are always oppressing them. (It’s always our fault, isn’t it?) All that’s a long story, but one of the things they can’t explain is why Asians have high IQs. Did we forget to oppress them? Also, why are Hispanics coming here by the millions — so they can be oppressed? Since they don’t have an opportunity to be oppressed until they arrive, then what exactly is it about the exposure of their backs to the waters of the Rio Grande that causes their average IQ to fall to 91?
All told, the Bidet mortgage diversity tax is merely another item in the racial spoils system that’s been underway since the 1960s. This would be as good a time as any to call attention to it, reveal it as the pandering scheme that it is, and make it so politically unpalatable that they reverse course. Apart from that, we’d better start calling bullshit on this “equity” business — or we’re going to get a lot more shakedowns like this in the future.
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11 comments
Of course it won’t help. Over 10% of Habitat for Humanity homes get foreclosed on. Some say the numbers are much higher than that. They get a free house, albeit a modest one, and they can’t, or won’t pay the taxes. Oy vey.
Call it a Diversity Tax or perhaps also Reparations Tax…. Some ‘groups’ have been disproportionately paying taxes that cover a lot of social programs and creation of jobs that benefit other ‘groups’ (ex US postal service, well funded but underperforming school districts). Yet that is never counted with the demand for reparations that many will claim have been paid for decades. Wait, didn’t the banking system nearly collapse in 2007 with the well intended thrust to put people in homes they could not afford?
The moderate left is chock full of neurotic suburbanites who feel good about themselves because they vote Democrat and slap one of those “In This House, We Believe… etc”. Maybe what that sort of ‘Karen’ needs is a good dose of reality moving into the neighborhood.
Great point. There are a huge number of tax subsidies and outright grants for providing low-income housing. My understanding is that such operations can be quite profitable with the right strategy.
Like a bewildered gardener who plants a little white pine only to witness it grow over years into a towering monstrosity that snuffs out everything below it, a partisan landlord might take young fertile mothers sporting large broods of SNAPlets fathered by the most violent felons then plant them among the purest hardline racial defectors. You could develop methods of tenant antiscreening, maximizing future violent crime rates for decades hence and burying enemy home values, sinking vessels of wealth, under the trash strewn urban prairie.
With well timed exits, it could even prove a big earner.
That already had that. It was called blockbusting back in the day.
You’re talking about outlaws with a Gatling gun. I’m talking about disciplined soldiers with a fire-by-wire Vulcan cannon.
In any case, these sort of programs ought be called Reparations taxes or reparations programs. The mainstream by and large sidesteps drawing attention to enormous and costly social programs, acting as if there haven’t been any civil programs since the Civil War. As the topic of this spending does not come across people’s minds often enough, call it a Reaparati9ns program and tally up what has been spent.
Great article. Thanks.
There are Leftists who argue that genes don’t matter, and thus blacks should have the same IQ as everyone else, and the only reason they don’t is that whites are always oppressing them. (It’s always our fault, isn’t it?) All that’s a long story, but one of the things they can’t explain is why Asians have high IQs.
Someone arguing that genes don’t matter — the word means “what generates”, i.e. first cause, an incontrovertible description of the thing itself — is so fantastically dumb that they should not only be ignored but permanently excluded from all verbal interaction in the future. Deplatforming is not only appropriate but necessary when encountering trainwreck stupidity, lest a sickly mind derail critical deliberations.
To the point, all that is not a long story. It’s a very short one.
I recently wrote a letter to Warren Buffett — I’m a BRK shareholder and recommend it — expounding on exactly this topic and the shocking consequences that so-called tail effects can have when imposing equal outcomes on sharply disparate groups. Here is an excerpt:
The strength of the racial IQ gap finding lies in the sheer number of data points. Because virtually every standardized test ever administered correlates strongly with g, and because even lower g-correlating tests administered in sufficiently large numbers provide a strong measure of the subjects’ general intelligence, this means that probably every standardized test ever conceived in the United States is not only a relevant data set but a strong one. Just a partial recounting of such tests gives an indication of the weight of the evidence:
1) The ASVAB, its predecessors and equivalents from other branches were started in the 1920s. These have been administered to every enlistee in the US Armed Forces
2) The NEAP test was started in the late 1960s. It has been administered to every American student
3) Most states have NEAP equivalents, likewise administered to every student
4) ACT, SAT, GRE, LSAT and other college entrance exams that are administered to every college– or graduate school–bound American
All point to the same 15-point, one standard deviation difference.
These and similar tests collectively represent billions of data points, galactically beyond minima required to establish statistical significance. In fact, a full standard deviation difference between large groups is of such magnitude that it almost cannot be overstated. Just 3 consecutive observations at one standard deviation in the same direction strongly indicate a biased sample (.17^3 = .5% probability). We don’t have just three such observations but hundreds of millions out of billions of relevant data points.
The story’s length can therefore be measured: N = 3*.
Even if you had a sample of 50 blacks who scored an average of 1SD below the white mean, you would be able to prospectively conclude that all blacks will on average be found less intelligent with a confidence level that exceeds 99.9% because the standard error for that sample is 12 (the black standard deviation)/(50^.5) = 1.72 IQ points. To drive this home, a sample of just 50 representative blacks testing at a mean IQ of 85 is, in practical terms, strong enough to say with virtual certainty that the mean intelligence for all blacks is lower than that of whites.
Many people not familiar with statistical practice are surprised by how few data points are often required in the presence of strong results. We are virtually certain that blacks are less intelligent than whites at a sample of 50. We don’t have 50, or 500, or 5,000 or 50,000 or 500,000 or 5,000,000 or 50,000,000 but probably on the order of 500,000,000 data points. Each escalation represents roughly an order of magnitude of greater certainty.
Anyone saying “we need to study this further” is blinded by a terrible innumeracy or lying.
The left’s harebrained root cause analyses, assuming you find a straying ant that admits the reality of the IQ gap, are another story, but one that is equally short. Posting the refutations here would be redundant with a few of my recent posts, however.
*That’s a little contrived because you would have to observe 3 -1SD samples in a row without cherry picking. The actual average minimum sample size with mean IQ of 85 to reasonably conclude blacks are less intelligent is N ≈ 16, a size any urban teacher encounters every work day.
Billions of data points may be an overestimate, but even so, I understand that a thousand will give a decent statistical margin of error. Indeed, we have more than enough information about it to draw conclusions. Anyway, the large degree of heritability of intelligence would be about as widely accepted as the law of gravity, if not for leftist activists posing as scientists who keep muddying the waters.
You might consider submitting the letter here. I doubt Warren Buffet himself is going to see the email, unless you’re one of his golfing buddies.
More proof that we must separate 100% in perpetuity – now. There r plenty of examples of a people breaking away in North America like – Orthodox Jews Amish, Hutterites, Mennonite’s.
Well, I called it first. I wrote this on 4/27, and a day later, someone in LOX News figured out that the diversity tax is going to be harmful to Asians:
Biden’s mortgage redistribution plan may burden one minority group the most: experts | Fox News
There’s a good bit of hand-wringing of how it affects Asians, and the rates their mortgages are being denied. However, I’m not seeing a word questioning why it’s OK to make Whites pay the largest part of the diversity tax. LOX News needs to step up the game there.
“Don’t say white” is an unofficial rule with severe consequences. But the Asians are a useful proxy. Plenty of them are growing might frustrated with affirmative action taking a toll on their college, grad school and job prospects. Not to mention crime. They know who is attacking them. There are a few loud ones laughably blaming it on white supremacy, but they also seem like the one who don’t fit in with usual Asian aspirations for STEM or classical music.
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