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Fairness will be the death of us. In all the discussions of Obama's new housing plan, the notion of fairness, or rather, the plan's fundamental unfairness, comes up again and again.
You know the litany:
It's unfair to reward irresponsible homebuyers who are now underwater on mortgages they never should have taken out. It's unfair to extend a helping hand toward people who have mortgages on their primary residence, but provide no direct help for those with mortgages on a second home. It's unfair to help people with conforming loans, but not those with jumbo mortgages. It's unfair to spend $275 billion of taxpayer money helping just 9 million deadbeats.
We hear that this plan rewards the reckless and punishes the responsible.
I say so what?
Who cares if it's fair?
We can worry about right and wrong when the economy's not on life support. Right now all of these issues are totally tangential at best. I just want the housing plan to work.
Look, most people in their 20s don't own homes. So in a narrow sense, it's good for me and my friends if people keep getting booted out of their houses because they can't cover the mortgage and housing prices keep going lower. And you could say the opposite of that is true, using our tax-dollars to keep these people in their houses and prop up prices is bad for people who don't own homes but might want to.
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