AIPIS 191 - The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America with Richard Rothstein

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company.

For more information and links to all our great podcasts, visit hartmanmedia.com. Welcome to the AIPIS Show. For accredited income property investment specialists and those who aspire to be if you're a real estate, mortgage or financial professional, this is the place for you. We'll explore innovative investment analysis, sales marketing and income generating strategies for the most historically proven wealth creator income property. Learn from the experts as they show you how to build a better business and a better life. It's my pleasure to welcome Richard Rothstein to the show. He is a Research Associate at the Economic Policy Institute and Fellow at the Thurgood Marshall Institute of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. He is author of the new book the Color of A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Richard, welcome. How are you?

Thank you very much. I'm fine, thanks.

Yeah, it's good to have you give our listeners a sense of geography. You live in Berkeley, California, but today you are coming to us from beautiful Cape Cod, Massachusetts, right?

That's correct.

Fantastic. Well, it's good to have you tell us about sort of the thesis of your most recent book here, the Color of Law and how these old, old segregation policies are still impacting us today.

Yes, I'd be glad to. Every metropolitan area in this country is racially segregated with neighborhoods that are predominantly black and neighborhoods that are predominantly, if not exclusively white. And most people think that this happened because of private prejudice or people's choices of where to live, or perhaps real estate agents who steered people to neighborhoods of their same race. The Supreme Court's endorsed that view. They call it de facto segregation, and they've said that there's no constitutional remedy if segregation is all the result of these private activities. But in fact, that's not how our neighborhoods became segregated everywhere in the country. They became segregated by explicit, racially explicit government policy, mostly by the federal government and also by state and local governments that were designed in the mid 20th century to separate the races, the blacks and whites. Throughout the country. The main policies that the government pursued were first public housing, which was for civilians, mostly for whites, beginning in the New Deal because people were without housing during the Depression. And so public housing was built for whites, but some for African Americans as well. And it was segregated by the federal government not in the south only, but in the north, in the Midwest, in the west, frequently segregating communities that had never known segregation before, demolishing neighborhoods that were integrated. There were many neighborhoods at that time in the early to mid 20th century which were Integrated much more than there is today because workers had to be able to get to their factories to work. They didn't have automobiles. And so you had many neighborhoods that were comprised of Irish and Italian immigrants and Jewish immigrants and African Americans and whites who migrated from rural areas. Those neighborhoods were frequently demolished by the federal government to create segregated housing for families without housing during the Depression, creating segregation where it hadn't been known before. The second major policy that the federal government followed in the mid 20th century was it subsidized the suburbanization of the entire country. That is, it created suburbs by guaranteeing bank loans to large developers of large suburbs on condition that those developers sell no homes to African Americans. So perhaps the most famous example of this is Levittown, east of New York city. That subdivision, 17,000 homes. Levitt could never have assembled the capital to build those 17,000 homes on his own. He did so only with bank guarantees from the Federal Housing Administration. And the Federal Housing Administration prohibited him from selling any homes to African Americans and actually required that he put a clause in the deed of every home in Levittown prohibiting the owners from reselling to an African American. And Levittown is just the most conspicuous example because it's best known. But this happened everywhere in the country. The entire suburbanization of the United States that took place in the late 30s, 1940s and 50s and into the 60s was subsidized by the federal government on condition that it be all white. And so what federal policy did was it created a white noose around African American neighborhoods and central cities. As the federal government subsidized this suburbanization, whites left public housing. They no longer needed public housing. African Americans had no choice but to remain in central cities, many in public housing, because they weren't permitted to move to suburbs. And so these federal policies played the most powerful role in segregating every metropolitan area in the country. And it was so powerful that its effects endure today. And there has been no ability to undo them, no policies to remedy these unconstitutional actions of the federal government. So that's the theme of the book. And of course in the book I describe many, many other policies of federal, state, local governments that also perpetuated, created or reinforced dental segregation. It's a what the Supreme Court would call a de jure system, although it's never recognized as de jure state sponsored segregation.

Uh huh. So this is fascinating. So is one of the demarcation points has got to be, of course, the civil rights movement, right. The early 60s when things really started to shift. But I Am shocked that this was a government sponsored thing. In other words, FHA said to Levittown, for example, you know, we will finance the project or insure the loans that the ultimate end home buyers get. I don't know which one, but you know, please tell us, say black people can't buy here or. And you can't resell to a black person. That's mind boggling.

That's correct. They insured the bank loans that Levitt used to develop the project, to build the project. It wasn't a question of individual mortgages, of course, they then insured individual mortgages to the white buyers of those homes. But the project was segregated by the guarantees of the bank loans by the FHA on condition that no homes be sold to African Americans. And as I say, this is not a problem. Just in Levittown. It didn't exist just in the South. It's everywhere in the Los Angeles, which a symbol of suburbanization in the 1950s and 60s. The community of Lakewood.

Oh, Lakewood. I was just gonna, I was just gonna say. Yeah, I used to live in Long Beach. I was just gonna say Lakewood is like the classic, you know, suburban type thing outside of Levittown. Just to be clear on this, is it the end buyer loans or the loans to finance the entire master development of the subdivision? Which one is that? Or both.

It was both. It was both. The end buyer loans, of course, were insured. The mortgages were insured by the FHA only to whites. African Americans couldn't get individual mortgages to buy homes in the suburbs, in these all white suburbs. But the most powerful action of the FHA was in guaranteeing the bank loans for development. In other words, when Levitt wanted to build Levittown or when Mark Taper wanted to build Lakewood or many of the other suburbs around the country, they went to the Federal Housing Administration and got FHA approval of the specifications of the entire development. They got approval for the design of the homes, for the setbacks, for the design of the streets and the roads in the development, the materials that were used, and for the racial restriction that they had to impose in order to get the Federal Housing Administration guarantee of these bank loans. So it was the bank loans that were primarily responsible for the segregation that financed the entire construction of the subdivision. And as I say, it was all over the country. We've mentioned a few. Another one, you may remember a song that Melvina Reynolds wrote that Pete Seeger used to sing about houses on a hillside made of tiki Tacky. They all look the same. That was a subdivision south of San Francisco in Daly City that was also financed by the fha. And it happened in every city in between Levittown and the West Coast. So that's the reason that our suburbs became all white. At the time, these suburbs were selling homes very, very inexpensively. And African Americans could have easily afforded to buy them just as whites could. Levittown, for example, or Daly City or Lakewood in the mid 20th century were selling homes for about $10,000 apiece. In today's dollars, that's about $100,000 or twice national median income. Working class families can afford to buy a home at twice national median income for 100,000. There were many African Americans, returning war veterans, who could have bought those homes just as easily as whites could have, but they were prohibited from doing so. Over the next two to three generations, those homes gained in value. Today, they sell for 300, 400, $500,000, seven times national median income. They're no longer affordable to working class families of either race. So it doesn't help much to have passed the civil rights law, as we did. And it was an important law, a Fair housing Act.

Right? 1960. We're talking. Let's just to give. Just to give listeners.

1968.

1968. And there was a California. And there was a California law in 1963, five years earlier, but the federal law was 1968. Okay?

So that's when there were some. There were some laws like this all over the country. Yes, but 1968 was the federal law.

Okay, and so did the federal law solve the problem, you're saying, right?

No, it didn't solve the problem. It told African Americans, in effect, okay, you can now move to Lake Widow. You can now move to Levittown or to Panorama City or to Daly City. But the homes were now unaffordable to working class families. So the right that it gave to African Americans in 1968 was an empty right for most people. And that's why the metropolitan areas are still segregated today, because the federal government created this segregation at a time when suburbs were affordable to working class families. And today they are not. So the patterns remain, and we've never undertaken any policy to remedy them as we're required to do under the Constitution.

Okay?

So the Federal Housing Administration was operating unconstitutionally in implementing these policies.

So I want to ask you a question. Well, first of all, before I ask the other question about the federal government getting into insuring loans and starting to design and socially engineer, which I do want to talk to you about that. But before I ask you that, why would the federal government engage in these practices that you say they engaged in before the Civil Rights Act? That's really quite surprising to me that it would be so institutionalized.

Well, I can't really tell you why it did it. It was the policy of the New Deal and you know, the New Deal.

But the New Deal was a progressive Democrat thing. So. Yeah, I mean, what?

Well, the New Deal, you have to remember, was a coalition of Northern and Southern Democrats. Southern Democrats were openly segregationist. Many Northern Democrats were as well, but not as much so. But it wasn't simply that the New Deal had to compromise with Southern Democrats in order to get these policies implemented. Because Southern Democrats insisted on segregation in Southern states. They wouldn't have cared if Levittown was integrated or if Lakewood was integrated, or if Panorama City, the ones that the examples were using, were integrated. They only wanted to ensure that they had the right to segregate developments in their states. So the federal government, on its own initiative, without any pressure from Southerners, segregated the metropolitan areas in the North. And the same thing is true of public housing. People think of public housing today as a place where low income African Americans live. Public housing, as I said, was initially meant primarily for white middle class, lower middle class families who were affected by the Depression. But there was no need for the federal government to segregate public housing in Northern cities, creating segregated patterns that still exist today. That was a federal policy that was not required by Southern Democrats. Southern Democrats wanted to ensure that public housing in the south was segregated. But again, they didn't care if it was segregated in Cleveland or in Boston or in New York or in Detroit or in Chicago. That was a federal policy that was implemented nationwide from Washington.

So, Richard, we see what's happened here and the affordability stuff that you've mentioned, it's not really quite as simple as you say, because of the financing that's available. The reason housing prices skyrocketed like that is that the government started subsidizing real estate through Fannie mae, Freddie Mac, FHA, Virginia. And you know, the 30 year mortgage is a pretty unique thing when you look around the world. Right. That's a pretty American thing. Not exclusively, but largely. Okay. And that has caused housing prices to skyrocket. I mean, Fannie Mae's stated mission is to increase homeownership. Well, if you're going to increase homeownership, you increase the supply of money. The classic explanation or definition of inflation is, you know, a large Amount of dollars chasing a limited supply of goods and services. And so that's exactly what you had. And the housing that you mentioned when it cost $10,000 in say Lakewood or Levittown, the financing wasn't as plentiful as it is today. That financing just increased massively in the 70s is when it really started when we, after we went off the gold standards and there was this huge multiplier effect. And yeah, it's absurd when you compare the price of a home to the median income, but not when you compare the price of the home to a mortgage payment. That's a different equation. And I agree that it's still out of whack. You're certainly right. But it's not quite as out of whack as one might believe by just looking at the price to income ratio. Is that fair?

Perhaps I'm not an expert as you are in this financing that went on in the 70s, but I will tell you this, that when white families were subsidized by the federal government in the 1950s in particular to move out of public housing, which had been a predominantly white institution until then, into FHA guaranteed whites only homes, single family homes in the suburbs, they frequently paid less in their monthly carrying charges for their mortgages and they didn't need a down payment if they were veterans, they paid less than they had been paying in rent in public housing before. So this was a massive policy to redistribute the population of urban areas, to shift the whites into suburbs and to keep the African Americans in central cities. And it was financially irresistible for white families to leave the central cities and move to suburbs because the financing, as you say, was so easily available and it was so inexpensive. The Federal Housing Administration invented the long term amortized mortgage for new home buyers.

Sort of interesting, isn't it, that you look at it now and it's sort of like that equation has flipped. You look at all these redevelopment projects in the urban core, in the inner cities. I don't know if I should say inner cities. That might not be the exact.

Right.

But urban cores around the country are being redeveloped. They're very expensive. I mean, you know, everybody wants to live in these walking based communities where you, you know, they don't want to drive, they don't want to live in the suburbs, but living in the suburbs, like torture. Now I have predicted, interestingly that there is going to be a renaissance of the suburbs, right, because of the self driving car. And I think that's going to change because transportation is going to become easier. But you know, it's kind of like now these white suburbs, those are the people that are tortured with terrible commutes and stress and car accidents. And it's kind of funny how that that flipped around. But I don't know. What do you think about that?

Well, I don't know, I'm not an expert in this, but you know, I don't see, I mean, driving cars, I don't see how a self driving car solves the problem. It takes up just as much space on the parking lot freeways as a car that the driver is behind the wheel in.

Well, y.

So it's not going to solve the congestion problem.

Yeah, no, no, I'll tell you how it solves it. Number one is you don't have to actually drive it. Right. And so you can just sit there in your car and work, take a nap or you know, read the paper, whatever you want, you know, potentially in the future. But also.

Well, excuse me, but unfortunately, unfortunately, too many people do that now when they're.

Driving their car or they put on their makeup or do texting. I completely agree.

Right.

But also, once the self driving cars are networked together, you can run them at, you know, know, 90 miles an hour, three feet off each other's bumper safely and you can increase the, what's called the packing distance by six fold. So we don't need to build any new roads. What we need is technology. Technology can solve this problem, but it's just a commentary on how that's kind of flipped and how now, you know, for the last, say 15, 20 years, it's become very in vogue, very desirable to live in the city and be able to walk to things and all that kind of stuff. So you've seen this sort of change. The equation's kind of flipped. But what I want to ask you on the big topic, Richard, is this because I really want to get your take on this. The government gets its nose in all of these things just like it did in the 50s, right. You know, it started financing these projects and offering loans to this group or that group and doing all this social engineering. And wouldn't you just agree that if the government was smaller and it didn't engineer all these things the government tries to engineer and regulate have all these unintended consequences later. Right. This is a great example of that. You know, there's another subject that I had Thomas Sowell on my show. I'm sure you're familiar with his work and probably would debate with him, but I came up with the term that I think is pretty interesting. And you see this in a lot of suburban areas nowadays. I call it environmental racism. Came up with that term because when I lived in Orange County, California, you know, in Irvine, you'd see all these dedicated open space areas and all these people that would move into these areas and then try to restrict growth and restrict construction. And basically it was a way of increasing their real estate prices because they'd limit supply through environmental laws. And you know, that's another form of this social engineering. Right. And it has all these unintended consequences. You know, who doesn't want to help the environment? Of course, we all want a better environment. Right. But you know, when you limit development, that means only the rich people can afford to live there because the prices are going to skyrocket as you constrain development. And more examples of government engineering. Right. What are your thoughts about that?

Well, I think you're raising several different issues. Let me try to separate them. In the Depression and afterwards, without the government, there would have been no suburbanization. Without the FHA's development of a long term mortgage, the housing amortized mortgage, the housing crisis would not have been solved. There was no civilian housing being built. Builders weren't. During the Depression and afterwards, we're not building homes for civilians. In fact, the federal government, in order to fight World War II, prevented materials from being used for civilian construction. So there was this enormous backlog of need for housing that the private sector was not filling. So I think I'm not in agreement with you that we could have done without federal involvement in the housing market. The problem is, and this is what my book is describing, is that it was done on a racial basis. If the federal government had made long term amortized mortgages to working class African Americans on the same basis that it did for whites, we still would have had suburbanization, but it would not have been segregated the way it is in many of our cities. Most of our cities would have a much more integrated pattern today than they do so far as restriction in the supply of housing through zoning regulations.

Environmental laws especially. But. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I don't think environmental laws especially. I think the most serious problem is the exclusionary zoning ordinances that many of these white suburbs then developed that prevent in many suburbs, most suburbs the construction of townhouses or single family homes on small lot sizes. So you have these affluent suburbs that have developed that are all white and that prevent prohibit the construction of homes that people of more modest means can afford. So I think one of the things that we would need to do if we were serious about remedying.

May I just wait before you go into the solution, one second, Richard, I just want to mention one thing before you. But please continue, because that's an important thought about remedying it and the Constitution and so forth, what you were saying. But I would argue that the suburbs are not all white. When I lived in Orange county, that looked pretty Asian, Middle Eastern. I mean, there were. It was a tossed salad or, you know, for sure. I mean, it was not all white by any means. You know, I just want to point that out. But also, what zoning restrictions are you talking about?

That's a very. I'm saying that's a very unique California perspective. California, as you know, is the most diverse state in the country, but the African American population. And the African American population is not the largest minority in California, but it is in most of the country. And in most of the country, you don't have the kind of diversity you have in Orange County. What you have is predominantly white suburbs that are surrounding predominantly African American central cities. If you go to Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland or any of the metropolitan Milwaukee and any of the large metropolitan areas east of California, what you find is the pattern that I've been describing.

Okay, yeah, fair enough. I'm not really arguing with you on that. But I'm just saying not all suburbs are all lily white. Okay, but what zoning restrictions.

Well, let me go on on that for a minute, though. It's. You're right. There has been growth of African American suburbs, inner ring suburbs in the last few decades, particularly as the kind of redevelopment of central cities has cleared land that African Americans were living in and has forced them to move to other places where they're accepted and where they can move. But these are inner ring suburbs. The outer ring suburbs are still overwhelmingly white. I mean, a place like Ferguson, Missouri, which became so well known after the events of 2014, where the police policeman shot a young African American man, killed him. Ferguson, Missouri, became a predominantly black suburb because of redevelopment that took place in the central city of St. Louis. And the only place that African Americans could move when their home was demolished were a few in a ring suburbs like Ferguson, which is what's happening in.

The Bay Area with the gentrification of, say, Oakland. Right. That's a great example.

It's happening everywhere in the country. But African Americans are still unable to move to most suburbs. There are a few. And so what we wind up doing is shifting the African American population from one segregated community to another, but not the gentrification is not producing integration in the suburbs generally.

So Obama wanted to, he wanted to, you know, one of his last things, what he was trying to do when he left office is really engineer this and to your mind, probably fix it. He wanted to take. And you know, if you have a $300,000 house in a nice suburb, we got to move some other people in there that can't afford that house. We're just gonna, you know, give them the money or rent the house for them or subsidize it and, and we haven't even had a chance, section 8 and stuff like that.

But yeah, I'm sorry, that's ridiculous. No, Obama never proposed anything like that. Giving people money to buy a $300,000 house. Well, he did propose. Is the kind of thing that I was talking about before. I didn't mean changing zoning ordinances. What he did propose is requiring suburbs assess the extent to which they were segregated and to which their zoning ordinance, for example, perpetuated segregation and take steps to remedy that.

And he told the city of federal funding if they didn't play ball. Right.

Well, he never got that far. He never got that far. There was no.

Floated the idea.

That's. Well, some people floated that idea. And it's not clear what would have happened if suburbs refused to take steps to desegregate, refused to do things like I mentioned before, like permit the construction of single family homes on modest lot sizes or permit the construction of townhouses in order to keep themselves lily white. So yes, there was the possibility that way down the road, long after Obama left office, that somebody might decide to enforce this. But all the Obama administration asked was for suburbs to assess the extent to which they were segregated and come up with a plan to remedy that segregation. How would you remedy. Nobody ever suggested giving. Well, I just gave you an example. The suburb has a zoning ordinance that prohibits the construction single family homes. That would help to remedy. Yeah.

What you're saying is if the zoning ordinance didn't prohibit higher density housing, that is usually more affordable. Right. That's the thing. You know, when you.

Yes.

When you require low density housing, you got a lot of land cost in the equation, so the price goes up. Right. If you permit higher density housing, typically you can make that house less expensive so people can afford to move there. Right? That's the idea.

Correct.

Yeah. Okay, I got you. I'm in agreement with you there. Okay. Okay, good. What do you think of, like, Ben Carson, for example? Just curious.

Ben Carson. I don't think, like most Americans, I don't think he understands this history of unconstitutional housing practice. So, for example, in describing the Obama plan that we were just talking about that requires suburbs to take steps to desegregate, he called that social engineering. What he didn't understand was that it was really an attempt to undo the social engineering that the federal government directed throughout most of the 20th century and whose effects remain today. Like it or not, under our system of government, if you have an unconstitutional policy, there's an obligation to remedy it.

Yeah, absolutely.

You can't simply. One of the things I say in my book is letting bygones be bygones is not a constitutional policy.

Fair enough.

So Secretary Carson doesn't understand that there's a history of unconstitutional action on the part of the federal government that has to be remedied. And so he thinks that the remedy is simply starting from scratch as social engineering. As I say, it's an attempt to undo the social engineering that the federal government imposed throughout the mid 20th century.

Thoughts just quickly on Section 8 housing housing assistance Program.

Sure. The federal government has a number of programs in the housing field. The largest program it has is the mortgage interest deduction, which again subsidizes single family homeowners, mostly white, mostly suburban.

Not because of the policy. You're just saying mostly white, mostly suburban people take out mortgages. Right? That's really how that comes about.

Well, it's for single family homeowners. And as I explained to you earlier, the federal policy prevented African Americans by and large from becoming single family homeowners to the same extent that whites were. And the mortgage interest deduction is usable only for people in higher income groups.

Who can afford to buy a house.

Well, who have the kinds of income tax returns where you itemize deductions. That's right.

Okay.

That's the group that the mortgage interest deduction applies to. And that is the most expensive federal government spending in the housing field. Then it has two programs for lower income families and they are predominantly African American and Hispanic. One is something called the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, which is run by the Treasury Department, which gives developers a subsidy to a tax break to build homes that are affordable to low income families. And unfortunately, that program subsidizes primarily the placement of these developments in already segregated neighborhoods. So it reinforces segregation. It does this because developers. The land is cheaper there and that's where developers want to use their tax credits. It does this because there's no community opposition to building a low and moderate income housing in these segregated neighborhoods and because it's easy to rent them because people in the neighborhood can see them easily available. So that's one program. The second program that the federal government has for low and moderate income families, low income in particular, is the Section 8 voucher program, the housing choice voucher program. And this is a subsidy that the federal government gives to low income families to enable them to rent apartments at the median rent of the metropolitan area where they live by spending no more than 30% of their income on rent. And so the subsidy makes up the difference between 30% of their income and the market rent of an average apartment in their area. This program also reinforces segregation for a number of reasons. For one, landlords are permitted to refuse to accept families with Section 8 vouchers. So typically what happens in most places in the country, there are a few exceptions where this kind of discrimination is prohibited. But in general, landlords are permitted to refuse to accept Section 8 vouchers. And so landlords in middle class communities refuse to accept them. And only landlords in segregated communities or the segregated low income communities accept. Secondly, if you think about it, if you calculate a subsidy based on the average rent in the metropolitan area, that subsidy is going to be too little to rent in a middle class neighborhood and too high to rent in a low income neighborhood. And so what happens is landlords in low income neighborhoods raise their rents to take advantage of the surplus subsidies they're getting, and families are unable to use the Section 8 vouchers to rent in middle class neighborhoods. Now, at the very end, that is.

Such a good point you made right there. That would that really. I just want the audience to make sure they heard that one. This again is why my thesis is the government needs to just get out of all this crap. Do you see how they distort the market with these programs? It's just market distortion.

But how do you solve the problem of families that are desperately in need of housing and there's no affordable housing for them?

You know what you do? I mean, I. It's not palatable to the American people. Okay, look at you. Just slowly lessen the size of government and the market will ultimately adjust. I'm sure. We don't agree on politics. I'm a libertarian, you're probably a Democrat, and I just think both sides of the aisle are wrong. You got to just stop trying to engineer everything because there's always a ton of unintended consequences. You have pointed out so many. You are so right about them. You know, whether it be back to the right after the great, great depression or today with Section 8. I mean, you're right. I agree with you. The government's just got to stop distorting the market. Now, you can't do it all overnight because it'd be too painful. But you slowly just gotta phase this stuff out and let the market adjust, you know, in a palatable way.

Well, this belief that the market will take care of everything is, I think it's, it's a religious belief. It's never been proven in practice.

Well, it's never been proven the government can take care of everything either. I mean, that's never been.

Well, no, there are unintended. I didn't say the government could take care of everything. And there's certainly unintended consequences. But the fact that there are some unintended consequences does not mean that the unintended consequences overwhelm the main thrust of the policy. There is no way we're going to provide housing in this country for low income families without some form of government assistance. We have slums in many urban areas. They will get worse without this kind of assistance. You know, families with Section 8 vouchers, there is not the unintended consequence that you talk about. But at least they have housing that they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. It shouldn't be in segregated neighborhoods. And the program could be modified. And what I started to say before is that at the very end of the Obama administration, they adopted a rule that enabled local housing authorities to adjust the amount of the voucher by the median rents, the average rents in particular neighborhoods, rather than the entire metropolitan area. To solve the problem that I was talking about before, the Trump administration advised housing authorities not to implement this rule because it said that the Trump budget, it told housing authorities that the Trump budget would not provide sufficient funds to maintain the Section 8 program as it presently exists. So there would certainly be no funds to make these kinds of adjustments. But the rule that the Obama administration had at its very end of enabling higher amount vouchers for middle class neighborhoods and lower amount vouchers for low income neighborhoods would have helped to solve this problem. When you implement a program, and this is true in business, it's true in the private sector as well as in government, you implement the program, you see that there are problems and you fix those problems. You don't say that because there are unintended consequences, there are problems that result. Therefore, the entire program was wrong. You make the adjustments to improve the program based on the experience that the implementation of the program has shown.

That sounds so incredibly rational. I absolutely love it. And Richard, you are a good sport. I appreciate you, you know, having a little debate with me. I just, you know, we can agree to disagree on some of this stuff. I know there's a problem. I agree with you about the problem. But I just think that the government has made housing unaffordable by financing it. If it got out of the business of insuring, you know, loans through Fannie, Freddie Va, fha, housing costs would go down and they would meet the market. They would be reasonable and people could afford houses. And then if the government got out of insuring student loans, the cost of college would drop. I mean, why is it that my mom went to Berkeley, where you live? My mom went to berkeley in the 60s. You could afford to work your way through college back then without getting a loan. When student loans came along, the price of college skyrocketed, just like the price of real estate skyrocketed when all this government backed financing came along, you know, and you just distort the market. It's like you go down the path of doing one thing and then you got to do another thing to cure the first thing. And it just, you know what? But you can have the last word, my friend. And please give out your website. Tell people where they can find your book too.

Okay, well, my website, it's at the Economic Policy Institute website, which is www.epi. or there's a panel across the top which says experts. And for some reason I'm listed there. So if you just pull down that menu, you'll find me and you'll find many articles I've written about this topic. And my book, the Color of A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America is available in bookstores and online everywhere. So thank you, Richard.

Thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate the discussion and keep making people think. We appreciate it.

I appreciate it. Thanks very much.

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