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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

#291

Post by MiroF »

refurb wrote: post #287
MiroF wrote: 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…

One of the reasons, I assume, is that plenty of those making >$145,000 live in HCOL areas and after paying for housing, childcare expenses, etc, they don't feel very "rich". So they likely agree the rich should pay more, they just think they are one of them.

> So they likely agree the rich should pay more, they just think they are one of them.

1. Pew adjusts for COL in its income distribution, so no. 2. HCOL are HCOL because they are desirable. It's not just a higher cost of living for the exact same quality of life.

> they don't feel very "rich"

I think the point is that there is a psychological phenomenon where objectively very high-income people don't "feel" rich. Even after "housing, childcare expenses, etc," six figures is relatively affluent in my book. Also this was $145,000 for a single person, so I'm not sure childcare would factor in for most people.

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

#292

Post by MiroF »

refurb wrote: post #288
MiroF wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that raising taxes won't by itself bring an effective program to fight income inequality into existence. Raising taxes on rich people changes the post-tax distribution to have less inequality, so it does literally bring into place a program to "fight income inequality." Given the fact that most government revenue goes towards social security, medicare, medicaid, you already know what it will be spent on and there a…

How would taxing the rich more and spending it on Medicare reduce income inequality? The low income might get better/more healthcare, but they don't get any more income from that spending.

> The low income might get better/more healthcare

It was a pedantic point - but taxing the rich intrinsically reduces the inequality of the post-tax income distribution because the difference between the top and the bottom is less.

> The low income might get better/more healthcare, but they don't get any more income from that spending

Lots of reasons - one is expenditures on healthcare by the employer, another is lost income due to injury/illness that preventative care could have prevented and that's before you start looking at medical expenses.

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

#293

Post by MiroF »

twblalock wrote: post #284
MiroF wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Study Finds Most Restaurants Fail Within First Year Of It Becoming Illegal To Go To Them Even without these laws, personal decisions would have decimated the business regardless. Even in places didn't shut down, patronage plummeted.

I see no reason to believe this. Restaurants are pretty packed in the places that reopened, and they were pretty packed in NYC until literally the day the lockdowns started.

> Restaurants are pretty packed in the places that reopened

Not true of where I live in San Francisco

> they were pretty packed in NYC until literally the day the lockdowns started

That's before people got scared because NYC was literally the first place for this to happen and most people had no idea what was going on. You can see how restaurants performed in countries that remained open, like Sweden, where you can find lots of people talking about how their sales dropped 80% despite no lockdown. For a low margin business, that kills.

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

#294

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

MiroF wrote: post #282
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My claim is that raising taxes won't by itself bring an effective program to fight income inequality into existence. The poll question is like asking "should the federal government expand its office space to deal with income inequality" - how's anyone supposed to know without an explanation of what it'll be used for?

> that raising taxes won't by itself bring an effective program to fight income inequality into existence. Raising taxes on rich people changes the post-tax distribution to have less inequality, so it does literally bring into place a program to "fight income inequality." Given the fact that most government revenue goes towards social security, medicare, medicaid, you already know what it will be spent on and there a…

When people discuss fighting income inequality, they're generally referring to structural obstacles, not the precise dollar amounts of the post-tax income distribution. If we increase Social Security funding by 10% with a haircut to all incomes above $100k, but don't change the underlying division between rich professionals who choose whichever job most satisfies them and poor millennials who never expect to achieve career satisfaction, I don't think we've successfully fought income inequality.

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

#295

Post by jakelazaroff »

refurb wrote: post #290
jakelazaroff wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly the same. "Rent seeking" means to increase your share of wealth without creating new wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

No it's not. "Rent" is not the same as "economic rent". If I buy a piece of land a build a house on it and rent it out, I'm adding value to society by creating value.

Building the house, specifically, creates value. Renting it out does not.

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

#296

Post by MiroF »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #294
MiroF wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that raising taxes won't by itself bring an effective program to fight income inequality into existence. Raising taxes on rich people changes the post-tax distribution to have less inequality, so it does literally bring into place a program to "fight income inequality." Given the fact that most government revenue goes towards social security, medicare, medicaid, you already know what it will be spent on and there a…

When people discuss fighting income inequality, they're generally referring to structural obstacles, not the precise dollar amounts of the post-tax income distribution. If we increase Social Security funding by 10% with a haircut to all incomes above $100k, but don't change the underlying division between rich professionals who choose whichever job most satisfies them and poor millennials who never expect to achieve…

> they're generally referring to structural obstacles,

I agree, and I'm not saying that 10% increase to social security fundamentally changes the underlying division. I think more drastic action is needed. But I wouldn't fight against a haircut on incomes over $100k that expanded the lower limits on medicaid (which many poor millennials take advantage of), even if income inequality still existed at the end.

Are rich, left-leaning professionals really under the illusion that the sort of policy change needed to fight structural inequality will lead to no change in their own relative purchasing power because there are even richer baddies out there to tax?

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

#297

Post by ryathal »

RhysU wrote: post #262
Blackthorn wrote: post #43

What's really crazy is that movie theaters in this state aren't allowed to open, but still have to pay their property taxes (which will likely bankrupt them). I have no love for some of them, but bullshit is bullshit.

They are still using the property. If one has an empty barn one pays property tax on it.

There should be a distinction between not using by choice and not using under threat of government sanctioned force.

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

#298

Post by maxerickson »

just-juan-post wrote: post #160
MiroF wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Study Finds Most Restaurants Fail Within First Year Of It Becoming Illegal To Go To Them Even without these laws, personal decisions would have decimated the business regardless. Even in places didn't shut down, patronage plummeted.

If people are scared and won't go to restaurants and bars then why continue to keep them closed? You are saying that patronage is already down so why even restrict them? Give people and businesses a choice in the matter. This is about letting individuals and businesses make their own decisions without the government forcing them to close.

Most people advocating for reopening would kick restaurant employees off of unemployment. Those employees are the people in the equation with the least power, and the most exposed to the risk.

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

#299

Post by tptacek »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #274
refurb wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Collecting rents is not the same as "rent seeking".

It's exactly the same. "Rent seeking" means to increase your share of wealth without creating new wealth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

It is, kind of obviously, not exactly the same thing, and the 51% of Wikipedians who agreed about the content of that article agree, because it does not support the point you're making. Instead of attempting an axiomatic derivation of the term, you could just link to an actual discussion by economists of the term, most of which make the distinction between the layperson use of the term "rent" and Ricardo and Krueger's definition.

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

#300

Post by jjeaff »

JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #153
paxys wrote: post #58

It's ridiculous that we couldn't coordinate a rent/mortgage forgiveness plan alongside all the customer bans put in place across the country. If a restaurant can't stay open, they shouldn't pay rent. If the property owner isn't getting rent, they shouldn't have to pay mortgage. And so on, up the entire chain.

That's exactly what an economic contraction is. A long chain of payments not being made (regardless of one's legal obligation to do so). Breaking the chain causes new problems. It reduces spending and purse strings get tightened. When the mortgage doesn't get paid, the mortgage backed security isn't getting its repayments. The retirees living off the dividends from the REIT don't get paid. Then the retiree spends les…

Yes, but let's be honest, most retirees today aren't living off dividends. Except for those who are indirectly living off them through pension plans. And those huge pensions and funds will be the first to receive a bailout.

The vast majority of the ownership of the stock market is owned by the very wealthy.

Most of main street's wealth is in their home, and while home values dropping can hurt them, these assets aren't usually income generating.

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