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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

#301

Post by jakelazaroff »

tptacek wrote: post #299
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

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'…

It’s “the same” in the sense that it’s an example of rent-seeking. Here's another definition [1]:

> David Ricardo introduced the term “rent” in economics. It means the payment to a factor of production in excess of what is required to keep that factor in its present use. So, for example, if I am paid $150,000 in my current job but I would stay in that job for any salary over $130,000, I am making $20,000 in rent.

Similarly, a landlord charges rent in excess of what it costs to maintain the land and building. Unless I’m misunderstanding Ricardo’s definition, that fits neatly inside of it.

[1] https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentSeeking.html

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

#302

Post by kasey_junk »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #301
tptacek wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

It’s “the same” in the sense that it’s an example of rent-seeking. Here's another definition [1]: > David Ricardo introduced the term “rent” in economics. It means the payment to a factor of production in excess of what is required to keep that factor in its present use. So, for example, if I am paid $150,000 in my current job but I would stay in that job for any salary over $130,000, I am making $20,000 in rent. Sim…

By that interpretation any profit making is rent seeking.

A landlord is not “rent seeking” just by charging rent. For instance they are providing value in the form of risk arbitrage in most cases.

The only case a landlord is purely rent seeking in the economic sense is if they only captured the difference in value of their properties due to external factors.

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

#303

Post by bmn__ »

jeffreyrogers wrote: post #278
bmn__ wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sweden […] is basically done False, confirmed cases have grown 4.4% since the start of September. > Massachusetts is still mostly locked down and has 4x the death rate [of Sweden] False, us/ma has 1.42‰ and se has 0.58‰. That's a ratio of only 2.45. > "citations needed." https://covid.observer/se/ https://covid.observer/us/ma/

> False, confirmed cases have grown 4.4% since the start of September. And yet they've more or less had zero deaths per day since the start of August. So yeah, they basically are done.

The correct numbers are 5743 (2020-08-01) → 5865 (2020-09-21), i.e. 122 or a growth of only about 2%, which is indeed very good. Only Ireland, Italy, China, Belgium are better (and 18 outlier countries adding zero to one deaths only because they each have less than 83 deaths absolute). So, following that definition of "done", I agree Sweden meets it.

But at what cost? Its deaths per capita quotient is horrendous! The thirteen worst countries are:

                  |deaths 2020-09-21|pop in million|deaths/1000 capita
    San Marino                    42         0.0339               1.24
    Peru                       31369        32.5105               0.96
    Belgium                     9950        11.5393               0.86
    Andorra                       53         0.0771               0.69
    Bolivia                     7654        11.5131               0.66
    Spain                      30663        46.7368               0.66
    Chile                      12379        18.952                0.65
    Brazil                    137285       211.0495               0.65
    Ecuador                    11095        17.3737               0.64
    United Kingdom             41877        67.5302               0.62
    US                        199862       329.0649               0.61
    Italy                      35724        60.5501               0.59
    Sweden                      5865        10.0364               0.58
The average for that column is 0.12 and the median is 0.04. It's a really bad trade-off for Sweden to let five to sixteen times more people die than usual just to achieve a small growth rate a couple of months into the pandemic; this does not make any sense. For comparison, Germany's growth in deaths in that time frame was also quite small, namely 2.5%, but they have an under average death quotient of only 0.11.

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

#304

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

MiroF wrote: post #296
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Again, the fundamental question is whether structural inequality is indeed a problem that can be solved by government spending, and I don't think it is.

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

#305

Post by jojobas »

refurb wrote: post #286
jojobas wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Simple! Just like 2008. No knock on effects at all.

Is NY commercial real estate a foundation for another CDS scam? You borrow money to make a bet, you face the consequences.

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

#306

Post by tptacek »

kasey_junk wrote: post #302
jakelazaroff wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s “the same” in the sense that it’s an example of rent-seeking. Here's another definition [1]: > David Ricardo introduced the term “rent” in economics. It means the payment to a factor of production in excess of what is required to keep that factor in its present use. So, for example, if I am paid $150,000 in my current job but I would stay in that job for any salary over $130,000, I am making $20,000 in rent. Sim…

By that interpretation any profit making is rent seeking. A landlord is not “rent seeking” just by charging rent. For instance they are providing value in the form of risk arbitrage in most cases. The only case a landlord is purely rent seeking in the economic sense is if they only captured the difference in value of their properties due to external factors.

Right, as I understand it, the "economic rent" (ER) of an apartment lease would be the extent to which the cost of the lease was inflated by artificial scarcity (as opposed to just supply and demand). There are, then, rent-seeking things you could do as a landlord/developer, but in a well-functioning market where you're competing with lots of other landlords, the price of a lease reflects the market value of occupancy and does not include ER.

Similarly, one of the classic examples of ER is wage premiums paid to closed-shop union members: the clearing price for the labor involved is, say, $20, but your union bumps that up to $25; the extra $5 is ER. There is directly substitutable labor that could be acquired at a discount to union labor, but closed-shop rules lock in the extra rents.

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

#307

Post by jimbob45 »

nickff wrote: post #215
jimbob45 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absent units don’t pay the mortgage either. It’s not like there’s a glut of buyers out there that your tenant is blocking you from.

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

#308

Post by refurb »

MiroF wrote: post #291
refurb wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Ev…

Well shit, that's what I get for skimming the report.

I don't disagree with you at all. It's not reasonable to say "the middle class have a single family home in the mid-west, so if I don't have a single family home in SF, then I don't even have a middle class lifestyle".

And yes, a single person in a HCOL area making >$145,000 per year, is well off. It's just that well off in a HCOL area means owning living in a 2-bedroom apartment, rather than a 3,000 sq ft home.

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

#309

Post by dwaltrip »

scottlocklin wrote: post #253
dwaltrip wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Have you considered that your favored interventions are, in addition to being extremely harmful to society in every measurable way, probably also completely ineffective in altering the outcomes? Sweden didn't do a thing and is basically done with this nonsense, presumably for all time from the looks of the plots; Massachusetts is still mostly locked down and has 4x the death rate. Lockdown fetishists should be greete…

Did you read my parent comment right above? I don't claim to know exactly what the policies should be. And I explicitly stated that hardcore lockdowns that extend for months don't seem like a good idea.

I was just trying to push and get some clarity into how just-juan-post thinks about it, as clearly there is some obvious disagreement and I wondered what circumstances they think justify different interventions.

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

#310

Post by Dylan16807 »

hinkley wrote: post #191
Dylan16807 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're mixing up different points in time. Normally restaurants provide food for customer money, and that is fine. The suggestion is that if they get bailout money while not providing food then there is an unmet need for them to "give back".

I am not mixing up different points in time. You are considering the past and the present. The bailout is solving a problem in the present that, if not solved, guarantees they have no future. You want guarantees and there aren’t any. If you three want cover for yourself or policy makers, that’s fine. We can tweak the rules a bit to avoid some bad press. We market it as a prorated, forgivable loan if they continue to…

> I am not mixing up different points in time.

Well you're mixing up something if you have to ask "what do you think restaurants are for". They are for providing food. The thing they are currently failing to give back is... providing food.

You might disagree with that idea but you shouldn't be confused by it.

Your accusation of a "pretty dim view" sounds like you think the claim is that restaurants never give back. But that's not it at all.

> You want guarantees and there aren’t any.

What? "make them provide food" has nothing to do with "guarantees", and also this is not my opinion that I am explaining for you.

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