Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Wants You to Own A House
“The big promise of the American dream when I was a kid was that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could finance a house, take a summer vacation, you could raise a family, you could put something aside for your retirement — on one job,” presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during a recent podcast interview.
“And there’s not a single member of my kids’ generation that believes that that promise applies to them.”
While Kennedy has changed his position on a few issues throughout the course of his campaign — most recently, abortion and foreign policy — he has yet to waver on his core stances. Among them: protect the environment, break the military-industrial complex, get corporations out of government, and put wealth back into the hands of American citizens.
Biden supporters have accused Kennedy of being a Trump plant, while Trump recently accused him of being a Democrat plant. But in sentiment, many of Kennedy’s talking points are more like those of Bernie Sanders, rather than mainstream Republican or Democratic views.
“If you own a home, you care about your community, you care about the police, the firefighters, you show up at the PTA meeting, you care about the transportation, you care about the appearance of your property, and you care about your neighbors,” says Kennedy.
“Once you become a renter, which is what BlackRock, Vanguard… this new feudal oligarch… want us all [to do], we go from being citizens to being the subjects.
We need to re-establish the ownership society here. Because that’s the only way America survives.”
So what’s the plan?
“If you have a rich uncle who will cosign your mortgage, you can get a much lower rate because the bank’s basing it on his credit rating rather than yours,” Kennedy said in a recent interview on CNBC.
“So I’m going to give everybody a rich uncle, which is Uncle Sam, who will guarantee mortgages at, for single family first time single family home buyers at 3% interest. That will reduce the average price of mortgage by $1,000 a month.
I will finance that not by increasing our debt, which I’m not going to do, but rather by selling tax free 3% bonds to finance it.”
Like with any politician, it remains to be seen whether these specifics will actually be executed in the event Kennedy lands in the White House. But the bigger takeaway is that he has been consistently serious about making the middle class wealthy again.
“[The] main thing is if you own property, you have equity, which means you can borrow money, which means you can pursue your entrepreneurial impulses,” says Kennedy.
“And that’s [one of the reasons why] our country exploded. The American middle class after WW2 became the greatest economic engine in the history of mankind.”
Is RFK Jr. a looney?
In the media, Kennedy has frequently been on the receiving end of headline-driven criticism, some of which is more true than others.
For example, he has been labeled an “anti-vaxxer,” which is partially accurate. While there’s no doubt he has a personal bias against specific vaccines, he has also stated he wants every American who wants a vaccine to be able to get one.
Part of his concern regarding vaccines also stems from the fact that NIH scientists currently receive royalties from pharmaceutical companies, healthcare corporations, and foreign governments. For example, in 2021, the NIH and its inventors received nearly $120 million in royalties. Kennedy believes the presence of corporate interests casts doubts on our ability to trust the science, and has pledged to break these ties.
Elsewhere, Kennedy has also been labeled a conspiracy theorist, most commonly in connection with his views that Sirhan Sirhan was not the person who killed his father, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. However, the details he cites for his reasoning have also appeared in mainstream publications, like the Washington Post. From this perspective, it’s less that they’re conspiracies, and more that they’re just lesser known.
And of course, much has been made of the idea that his own family doesn’t support him. The truth here is that out of the hundreds of Kennedys, a few of his siblings who currently work for the Biden administration have endorsed Biden. On a recent appearance on Sage Steele’s podcast, Kennedy mentioned that those same siblings also asked Biden to provide him with Secret Service protection.
The argument for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Trump won on a promise to “drain the swamp.” Rather than drain it, he expanded its real estate. Meanwhile, Biden is happily fueling international wars, driving up the national debt to help bomb more civilians.
Neither care about the fact that wealth is being transferred from American citizens into the pockets of corporations.
I admit I’m hesitant about Kennedy’s views on certain issues. But I have to ask myself what really matters.
On the subject of vaccines: I think he could be right about the big picture, but he also cites a lot of seemingly inaccurate studies for his reasoning. Nevertheless, if he were to land in the White House (and he has a legitimate shot according to the latest polling), there would be a whole nation of scientists that would fact-check him every step of the way.
In contrast, the fact that corporations and rising income inequality are destroying our financial futures isn’t something we can fact-check our way out of.
And Kennedy is the only candidate who is even aware of this problem.
Choose wisely.
