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One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

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Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#251

Post by tjr225 »

ryanmercer wrote: post #218
ryanmercer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Am I way out of band or does that seem like a comically small amount of money for the average American? I take home $465.62 a week so it would be a little over 2 weeks of take home pay for me. I could absolutely use that.

To add to this, I am extremely stressed right now. I have an immune-compromised 67 year old parent, I work in international freight, I have a GED so am not too marketable if I lose my job, I've got a few hundred dollars in savings, I've got enough food for a couple of months for my mother and I, that $1000 even just once would help markedly in reducing my stress. Add to that I'm supposed to be getting married in 68 d…

> I have a GED so am not too marketable if I lose my job

I'm the GP who started this huge thread but I just want you to know I got my GED in 2007 right before the last recession. Don't be so hard on yourself - you could have a remote job working for a company in SF like me :). It took a lot to get here but almost anyone can do it.

> Add to that I'm supposed to be getting married in 68 days and who knows what's going to happen now. I don't even know if the courthouse will be open to get the marriage license (it's only good for 60 days).

Why not just go down to the courthouse tomorrow and get married? Can you think of a better time? You're not going to disappoint anyone by cancelling the event.

> None of this is good for my sobriety. 7 months 25 days, 15 hours. I got this. I can keep that number growing.

Every day I wish I could get sober so in a way you have a wealth that I deeply desire :) Keep it up, it has got to be worth it.

Good luck and don't wait for the dust to settle to find yourself in a better position. I'll try to do the same thing.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#252

Post by Gunax »

neuronic wrote: post #171
Gunax wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's make it 10k per month, then we can all be wealthy.

Are you scared that others will also get money, just like you? Any noble status to lose or something?? What is this comment? I seriously don't get it. Government money is money by the people for the people.

No, right now government money is debt that has to be repaid plus interest by us or our children.

I don't want to get money for the same reason I don't want to go and run up personal debt.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#253

Post by xyzzyz »

aeternum wrote: post #233
xyzzyz wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the Fed should still determine the amount of QE based on inflation and economic metrics, however that QE should be distributed via a UBI rather than used to purchase financial instruments. But why go the roundabout way of going through QE to pay for UBI? Why not just increase taxes directly? The answer is, clearly, because once you talk about increasing taxes to pay for something, you start thinking hard ab…

Yes, for government services I agree, they should be paid for with taxes and we should have some semblance of a balanced budget. QE is different though, the Fed already has mechanisms in place to decide "how much" and is already printing money not paid for by taxes. Part of the goal of QE is actually to devalue the nation's currency in order to increase exports. The question is just how to best inject this printed mo…

> In one way, QE is an extremely efficient (and very difficult to evade) wealth tax applied proportionally and instantly to any entity that holds USD. It would be very hard to pull that off with traditional taxes.

The government could also just print itself lots of new dollars, it's even more efficient. We don't do that, because the central banks are independent from government, so QE is a roundabout way of allowing government to print more money in a way that doesn't create high inflation expectations in future.

The biggest reason we don't do such taxes though is because they would be extremely distortionary. It's super easy to evade USD cash tax: just don't hold cash, buy stocks or real estate or some other real property. The USD tax will artificially inflate those assets, while at the same time, will require new cash-denominated bonds to be have payouts indexed by inflation.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#254

Post by nickcox »

leggomylibro wrote: post #104
adventured wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> only 40% of Americans are able to cover an unexpected $1000 expense. That's the really sobering number, in my view This is pretty common everywhere across the developed world. The majority of OECD nations have a lower median wealth figure than the US, including Sweden and Germany (their median wealth figures are particularly shockingly low, given the affluence those nations should have vs their national output and…

Yeah, income inequality is not a uniquely American problem. But it's still worth pointing out that even though $1k probably seems like a piddling amount to most readers of this site, it could still help a lot of people who are significantly less well-off.

> income inequality is not a uniquely American problem

That's true but there are only a handful of countries doing worse: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/income-inequality.htm

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#255

Post by FillardMillmore »

magduf wrote: post #209
eudoxus wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand how that would work for Mortgage payments as they are controlled/facilitated by banks, and the government has the ability to coordinate with banks (in an ideal case). But how might the federal government enforce suspension of rent payments? Rent just goes to landlords (regular people) and is part of their gross income filed on their taxes. If you don't have to pay your rent, wouldn't we just be moving th…

The landlords are using the rent to pay the mortgage on the property. If the banks suspend mortgage payments, then the landlords don't need to collect rent any more. If the landlords desperately need that rent just to do basic maintenance and repairs, and don't have enough saved to deal with a possible problem that might happen in the next month, then they don't deserve to own the property.

> If the landlords desperately need that rent just to do basic maintenance and repairs, and don't have enough saved to deal with a possible problem that might happen in the next month, then they don't deserve to own the property.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but what's the argument for that? On its surface, the proclamation that they 'don't deserve to own their property' seems a little draconian to me. What if a repair is required that was unforeseen and not basic?

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#256

Post by neuronic »

Gunax wrote: post #252
neuronic wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you scared that others will also get money, just like you? Any noble status to lose or something?? What is this comment? I seriously don't get it. Government money is money by the people for the people.

No, right now government money is debt that has to be repaid plus interest by us or our children. I don't want to get money for the same reason I don't want to go and run up personal debt.

Government debt does not work like personal debt. At all.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/01/14/why-public-...

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#257

Post by tjr225 »

zarkov99 wrote: post #165
tjr225 wrote: post #3

Am I way out of band or does that seem like a comically small amount of money for the average American? I live in an extremely low COL area and live well within my current means. Assuming my work dries up and I don't have any savings, 3k$ would buy me two months tops. Just to give you an idea of how cheaply I live: Mortgage is ~800$/mo, Car is a paid off 2006 Toyota Highlander, Student loan minimums of ~400$/mo, My w…

I think its likely this would turn into $1K per month for a while. And, yes, for some people it would make an enormous difference.

1k/mo would make a huge difference for me even, but it sounded like a one time payment in the article.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#258

Post by foldr »

jakearmitage wrote: post #137
zbyte64 wrote: post #117

Or we could provide universal healthcare, but that would be crazy.

How would that help at this point in time? Italy has universal health and it is not helping. UBI, on the other hand, could make an impact.

>Italy has universal health and it is not helping

You can't just sat that universal health care isn't helping in Italy because things are bad there. Things might be even worse if Italy didn't have universal health care.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#259

Post by magduf »

tengbretson wrote: post #248
magduf wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably not that many, because that could result in massive inflation. Sure, QE has shown that we can print some more money and inflation isn't affected that much, but there have to be some limits to that. You can't just give everyone $1,000,000,000 (1B) and not have some huge effect on the economy from that.

It's not as ridiculous as it sounds. $100k per US household would only cost ~$10 trillion, which seems to be within one order of magnitude of the $1.5 trillion we just dropped without batting an eye.

Yeah, but my point is, if you take this to a ridiculous extreme ($1B per person), this would surely cause a disaster. So somewhere between 0 and this extreme, it goes from having little effect to having a big one, and I suspect it may be non-linear.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#260

Post by magduf »

Proziam wrote: post #246
magduf wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>4. Do we seriously trust the US Government to not mess this up? California is the [0]world's fifth-largest economy and still spends more than it takes in That's because the citizens of California send most of their income taxes to the Federal government, where a portion of it is sent to red states to subsidize them. If California somehow seceded tomorrow and that money was sent to Sacramento instead, the state would…

Source? California has an insanely high state income tax (up to 12.3%), compared to Nevada, which has ZERO state income tax. I find it dubious to put the 'blame' on the federal government for California's finances.

I don't need a source, this is common knowledge. Do you not know how the US federal income tax system works?

CA does have a high state income tax, but it also contributes far more to federal coffers than NV, and it doesn't get as much back as it puts in. Many other states get more back than they put in. Again, I don't need a source for this, this is common knowledge.

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