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Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

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Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#211
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/most-americans-sa... Namely what stood out, > Among Americans with the highest incomes – a subset of upper income adults who are in the top 7% of the sample’s adjusted income distribution – about a third (34%) of those who say there’s too much economic inequality say the government should raise taxes on people like them to deal with this, while 64% say this should not be d…

When someone proposes to address a problem by giving the government lots of money, I'm always skeptical. Why should we expect them to spend that money wisely? I'm not opposed to raising taxes if there's something important to spend the money on, but the words "income inequality!" aren't IMO a sufficient description.

Large amounts of government money go towards discretionary transfers like medicare, medicaid, social security, SNAP, etc. Is your claim that you think vast amounts of that money don't get to where they're supposed to go?

I think most of these programs are characterized by extremely low administration costs as a percentage of budget.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#212

Subsidizing the restaurants without getting anything in return seems like a misallocation of capital. Allowing 'creative destruction' on a massive scale is harmful to social stability and frankly just cruel. People didn't plan for it, because it is implied in our various social contracts that they don't need to(and that may be wrong, but this is not the time to fix that). We should consider subsidizing the restaurant…

Many restaurants are actually very inefficient food producers, and specialize in providing a nice setting for a date or other dining experience. Other restaurants specialize in providing a place for people to hang out with colleagues after work, or a place for recreational sports teams to have a meal after the game. These business models have been destroyed, and nobody will pay for the 'services' which cannot be delivered.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#213
post #98
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you go up that chain you will eventually run into a very serious monetary crisis that would crash the banks, the real estate market, and the entire economy.

You're going to have to explain that one in detail for me. We have now generated trillions in liquidity for corporations. Maybe I'm dumb; walk me through how this would "crash the banks", real estate, and "the entire economy".

It creates a cascading effect. There's an insane debt bubble and a lot of that debt will lose rating, so many investors will drop it creating a feedback loop. Dumb money have to drop it because of their mandate and/or rules, even if this is bad for their other assets (i.e. more debt they hold).

This would be the dumbest idea right now. I hope government agencies worldwide can resist the attack from media.

[Don't get me wrong, fuck banks, evil hedge funds, and speculative landlords, but they are barely going to be hit by something like this.]

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This isn’t about people making decisions for themselves Making decisions for ones self is exactly the principal that the USA was founded on. > You might be fine, but if you are asymptomatic, you can directly harm or kill others and not even know it. See also: Drinking, condom-less sex, smoking, and junk food. All of these things directly or indirectly harm others and if this is about public safety then it's time yo…

Have you thought about how many people need to die for you to change your mind on this one? Just curious where you draw the line.

I'm fine with 1 million.

One million is 99.7% of the USA.

Multiple studies have shown that the fatality rate is about .3%.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#215
post #123

What leverage do landlords have in enforcing payment, if no one would move in if they evict a business? I certainly would only pay very discounted rent until society reopens and I think it would be insane for anyone to suggest otherwise.

This is what I don’t get. You’ll pay more attracting a new tenet than if you just forgave rent until the time came that the property could hold a viable business again.

Forgiven rents don't pay the mortgage.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#216
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a city of 2 million aka .004% of the population. Oh so it's the population now? I forgot that the whole city of Nashville was infected. Not going to respond further.

You're done because we both know the math is correct, my argument is sound, and you don't like that. I see it often in these types of debates. It's easier to walk away from a losing position than to defend it. I'm not sure what you think I changed but the math is fairly straight forward. Nashville metro is 2 million people. There were 80 cases confirmed traced to bars and restaurants. They were keeping bars and resta…

Actually your argument is not sound as the person you are replying to already pointed out in a previous response to you that you seem to have missed. You actually contradicted yourself. Note:

"There were 80 cases confirmed traced to bars and restaurants."

"[80] of the infections came from bars and restaurants."

Those two statements are not the same as each other - the first, from the authorities, is true, the second, from you, is almost certainly not true unless every single infection from a bar or restaurant was actually traced.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#217
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What income do you consider the rich? I thought we were all in agreement, but I recently saw some Pew research that had me surprised.

Don't tax the high income bracket, tax the rentier bracket.

But what about the overlap? And tax the rentier bracket's what?

The reality is that that professional/managerial bracket has a large proportion of both the wealth and income in America, just because there are so many compared to the extremely wealthy large-scale owner class.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#218
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God no. They've been sitting on empty buildings for years. It's time for them to default on the underwater loans and let people actually put the wasted space to use. Every city in the US has a similar issue including the one near where I grew up and it's the weirdest most broken thing. I remember many times walking down streets flanked by empty buildings with homeless people sleeping outside.

Thats not how any of this works. The problem with a market is you have a rate that if something is below it its not profitable for people to live in a place. Idk why people blame the building owners. And people who do this are always people with perfectly good couches in their living rooms but would never let a homeless person sleep there, but want others to give up a entire building.

The way you think markets work don't always apply to land. Land (distinct from buildings) is one of the few resources for which ownership without utilization or improvement is not only profitable but sometimes optimal.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#219
post #167
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you also bail out those who bet on black and got red? When you bail out something like Ford you keep it running and collect tax revenue. If you don't, factories stop and the business essentially disappears. When a landlord goes bust nothing happens, other the financial loss for the landlord.

When a landlord goes bust nothing happens, other the financial loss for the landlord. It's like the old saying "when you own the $10,000, that's your problem", "when you own the bank $1B, that's the banks problem". When 1/3 of NYC commercial real estate gets foreclosed, that's not just the landlord's problem, that's everyone's problem.

When 1/3 of NYC gets foreclosed the new tenants will swarm to rent the places at a discount and reopen the cafes and everything else as soon as they're allowed to operate.

Re: Almost 90 percent of NYC bars and restaurants couldn’t pay August rent

#220
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would work in a normal market but the realestate market hasn't been allowed to correct because we keep bailing it out by having the fed buy up all the debt. This raises rent because it decreases the supply (people can just hold onto buildings as investments and not bother renting them out or wait for someone willing to pay something that should be above market value) and also raises inflation. Let me explain it…

I always found it curious how large employers in Manhattan would be moving out because the rent was too high. Simultaneously buildings would be converting into condos because they were unable to fill vacant commercial space. As an example, two buildings where I worked had this happen: 70 Pine Street (AIG) and 75 Wall Street(JPMorgan.) Doesnt the market meet somewhere in the middle?

I am not sure about NYC, but commercial property taxes are usually very high, and borne by the tenants; this may be a factor in the employers moving out.
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