Recently, 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gave a passionate speech on issues he intends to address if he takes the White House from Joe Biden. The Democratic challenger spoke to an energetic crowd of his supporters in Des Moines, Iowa.
Citizen Free Press posted a video on Twitter of the speech with the caption, “Go off Bobby Kennedy: ‘We have a lot of money when we need it for the bankers or when we need it for the War Machine. But we don’t have it when we need it for regular Americans.'”
Go off Bobby Kennedy:
"We have a lot of money when we need it for the bankers or when we need it for the War Machine. But we don't have it when we need it for regular Americans."
pic.twitter.com/PYOU2KFqlp— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) August 13, 2023
Kennedy opened the speech by stating his purpose for running, challenging the status quo in America, and dismantling what he outlined as a marketplace where corporations have too much power. “When I did my announcement speech in Boston, a couple of months ago, I talked about how my purpose in running was to challenge the corrupt merger of state and corporate power, which was a strip mining the American people and destroying the American middle class and strip mining them of their equity, their wealth and ultimately their democracy,” he said passionately.
RFK Jr. then explained one of the biggest issues impacting the American middle class, the perpetually rising prices of assets. For example, the presidential candidate talked about how unaffordable home prices have become to the average American. Some people in younger generations have little to no hope of ever being able to afford home ownership, as illustrated by a young individual Kennedy had spoken to.
“A home prices have increased during these past two presidencies from $200,000, average home to $450,000. And the interest rates are now going up five times. So he’s paying 10 times what kids were paying five or six years ago for the same home and he’s worried he will never be able to afford it,” RFK Jr said.
Bobby Kennedy then talks about the ever-increasing price of higher education as well. Like the housing market, the cost of attending college has far outpaced the rate of inflation over the past few decades. Older generations are filled with anecdotes of paying for college with summer jobs or, at the very worst, taking on very minimal debt. Now college students are saddled with thousands of dollars in debt, hindering their ability to begin expanding their net worth.
Using the same young person in his previous example, Kennedy outlined how this individual carries a large burden of student loans. “He’s paying seven times what I paid in real dollar for my education, and he’s worried that he’s going to carry that burden into his late adulthood,” Kennedy said.
RFK Jr. then pointed out how average Americans’ real incomes are simply insufficient, given the perpetually increasing cost of assets and necessities. “And today, 57% of the people in this country are not making enough money to pay for basic human needs as food, shelter and transportation,” Kennedy stated.
Later in his speech, Kennedy discussed issues such as banks and corporations with an outsized financial impact on Americans. He uses giant companies such as BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard, who Kennedy claims have purchased approximately 700,000 homes since 2008, forcing Americans away from home ownership and forced to rent.
Note: Featured Image is a screenshot from the embedded video.
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