In a graphic posted to Truth Social on November 8, Donald Trump lists himself next to Franklin Delano Roosevelt as one of two “great presidents,” because FDR’s “New Deal” introduced the 30-year home mortgage and Trump, apparently, wants to “go large” on the idea. Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte confirmed on X that “we are indeed working on The 50 year Mortgage  — a complete game changer.”

The Trump/Pulte proposal brings up two questions: First, is a 50-year mortgage a good idea? Second, why on earth does the federal government set mortgage terms?

The answer to the first question is easy: Longer mortgage terms are terrible for people borrowing money to buy homes.

As the length of a mortgage increases, the monthly payment comes down a little but the total amount paid goes up a lot. Let’s  take a simplified look at how things pan out for the same home, under current conditions, given different mortgage lengths.

The average US home price (as of May 2025) is $522,200. At the moment, the average interest rate on a 20-year mortgage is 6.12%; on a 30-year mortgage, 6.25%. I’m just guessing by linear extrapolation here that the interest rate on a 50-year mortgage would be about 6.5%.

On those terms, the monthly payment on a 20-year mortgage would come to $3,777.44 and the buyer would end up paying $906,586.57 total for that $522,200 home (this example doesn’t include the insurance, property taxes, etc. that get rolled into monthly mortgage payments as well).

At 30 years, the monthly payment would come down to $3,215.28, but the total paid would be $1,157,499.08 — more than twice the supposed price of the house!

And at 50 years? Your $2,943.73 monthly payment — only 23% less than the 20-year payment — would end up totaling $1,766, 237.75. Not only is that more than three times the supposed home price, but it’s nearly twice as much as you’d have paid on a 20-year term and about 35% more than you’d have paid on a 30-year term.

And by the way, mortgage payments are “front-loaded” toward paying interest at the beginning, so you don’t build significant equity in the home, by paying down principal, until the last few years of your mortgage term.

If you’re buying a home, the shorter the mortgage the better, even if you have to settle for a little less house to make the payment. Longer mortgages benefit the lender far more than the borrower.

As to why the federal government sets mortgage terms, well … about 70% of mortgages are “government-guaranteed” via Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Administration, and other agencies.

That gives the federal government significant monopsony power. If you’re a lender, your home loans are “qualified mortgages” as defined by the market’s biggest “customer” and its bureaucratic rule-makers.

Not that adding 50-year-mortgages to the “qualified” and “guaranteed” basket would be an imposition. Banks love longer-term loans for the reasons explained above: They get more out of you versus what you get out of the deal.

Strange: It’s almost as if those government agencies work for the banks rather than for the borrowers.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“Displaying passport holders’ sex at birth,” the US Supreme Court held in a short, unsigned ruling on November 6,  “no more offends equal protection principles than displaying their country of birth.”

The case, Trump v. Orr, concerns a Trump administration policy of requiring that “sex at birth,” rather than “gender identity,” be displayed on US passports. The ruling allows that policy to stand — reversing a lower court’s stay on its enforcement — while the matter continues to work its way through the lower courts.

Here’s what the plaintiffs in the case say they’re after: “[T]he same thing millions of Americans take for granted: passports that allow them to travel without fear of misidentification, harassment, or violence.”

While the following should be obvious, it has to be said because most people don’t seem to have noticed:

Passports don’t ALLOW people to travel, they RESTRICT the ability of people to travel. They’re a relatively recent tool of government control. They’re also wholly unconstitutional.

There’s a term for the government holding you in a place you’d rather not be and forbidding you to leave without permission. That word is “imprisonment.”

Under the US Constitution, imprisonment requires due process of law, including but not limited to conviction, by a jury, of a crime.

It wasn’t until 1947 that the US government strayed so far beyond the Constitution’s limits on its powers that it started requiring passports to enter or leave the US — and that requirement didn’t apply at the Canadian and Mexican borders until after 9/11.

The inclusion of “sex markers” on passports at all is silly, and limiting those “sex markers” to comply with Donald Trump’s personal preferences is sillier.

If the purpose of a passport is to establish that the government has issued a particular person a Very Special Important Permission Slip to Travel, matching that person’s fingerprint to a fingerprint on the passport is sufficient. Anything more is about bureaucratic control fetishes, not a desire to identify travelers.

Trump v. Orr just messes around at the edges of the bigger issue. The government shouldn’t be allowed to — and the Constitution forbids it to — require those Very Special Important Permission Slips to Travel in the first place.

If SCOTUS was willing to do its job — voiding unconstitutional laws — it would overturn the entire federal travel control regime instead of creatively interpreting “equal protection.”

The continuing existence of the US passport scheme is just another evidentiary exhibit in the airtight case that Lysander Spooner put forth in 1870:

“[W]hether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain — that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist.”

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Starting on November 7, the New York Times reports, the number of commercial flights to and from 40 of America’s busiest airports will drop by 10%.

Not because fewer people want to travel by air (in fact, we’re about to see the year’s busiest travel season).

Not because a major airline went out of business (smaller airlines come and go, but the last really big one to disappear was TWA in 2001).

Not because there’s some shortage of available aircraft (that’s ongoing, but not part of this particular problem).

Thousands of flights will be canceled because the federal government is in a supposed “shutdown.”

Air traffic controllers are working without pay until that “shutdown” gets resolved.

As you might imagine, employees who aren’t getting paychecks become less reliable about showing up for work. Some of them quit. Others call in sick. Towers are short-staffed.

I hear from a friend that” general aviation” — private planes and so forth, as opposed to commercial airlines — has already been taking a hit on getting air traffic control guidance.

Now we’re reaching the point where there just aren’t enough controllers working to safely handle the 10 million commercial flights that take off and land each year at American airports. US secretary of transportation Sean Duffy characterizes the flight cuts as a way to “alleviate the pressure.”

There’s an easy long-term solution to this problem, and it doesn’t involve screaming at politicians to get their act together, pass a spending bill, and start paying all those air traffic controllers again.

It’s time to take air traffic control away from the government, at least with respect to letting the Federal Aviation Administration serve as the controllers’ employer.

In 2024, US airlines reported revenues of $247.2 billion and net profits of $6.7 billion. Those airlines, and the airports they fly in and out of, are perfectly capable of taking over air traffic control services and facilities as a “private sector” activity. They’ve got a shared interest in passenger safety and efficient operations; they can surely work out the details in an amicable manner.

Wouldn’t such a transition make flying more expensive? Well, sort of, at least temporarily.

Ticket prices might rise at first, but I suspect the airlines/airports are better at making operations efficient and cutting costs than the US government.

And to the extent that prices do rise, that just means air travelers, rather than all taxpayers, will be footing the bill. Which, if you think about it, is exactly the way it should be.

Some things — all things in my opinion, but certainly THIS thing — are too important to trust to the whims of politicians and leave in the unreliable hands of government.

Fire the FAA and pay the air traffic controllers.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY