i'm all for recognizing that people aren't social dopes of systems that operate behind their backs, but I also think it's a lot more complicated than simple cost-benefit analyses.
i've got a bunch of comparison examples of how people end up reinscribing their own oppression, etc. but it's never a simple matter of them thinking they can scam the system or that they can somehow benefit. indeed, thinking about it, most of the examples that come to mind are of people telling others that they are scamming the system but in fact they aren't at all. (the women in Kathrin Edin's study of welfare moms; the poor white kids in Ain't No Makin' It; the long-term unemployed in the ethnography of a deindustrializing Ohio city, Magic City;) I'd detail them but I'm not sure if it's worth the extensive side trip. I guess I'll just ask, when you bought during the bubble, did you think of buying a house as something you could just walk away from later?
to the point about the category "sub-prime". we had a client who was a mortgage lender. his big thing was that lots of people were being conned into taking sub-prime loans when they didn't have to. he had this whole program set up to show people how they were being conned into the subprime thing, and show them how it was just as easy to get loans at the prime rate - and his company would help them do it.
i'm not so sure "subprime borrowers" necessarily means people of color and lower income white women.
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