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America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

economist.com

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Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#111

Post by ed25519FUUU »

anonporridge wrote: post #6

Anything other than direct cash transfers to individual humans is likely to have this effect. Institutions are simply always going to be able to navigate and take advantage of complex government programs better than real human beings. UBI or stfu. Time to try some trickle up economics. Also, for the love of god, let's stop prioritizing saving "jobs" that may or may not be necessary for civilization and start prioriti…

Didn’t the government just write checks to people? Wasn’t a ton of that money also fraudulently stolen and sent overseas?

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#112

Post by anonporridge »

ravenstine wrote: post #91
anonporridge wrote: post #6

Anything other than direct cash transfers to individual humans is likely to have this effect. Institutions are simply always going to be able to navigate and take advantage of complex government programs better than real human beings. UBI or stfu. Time to try some trickle up economics. Also, for the love of god, let's stop prioritizing saving "jobs" that may or may not be necessary for civilization and start prioriti…

I'm sure the few elites who own the vast majority of the wealth will agree and implement UBI in a way that doesn't enrich them or hollow out the poor and middle class. /s To be fair, I at least agree in the sense that we need to reexamine this idea of creating/saving jobs as something virtuous in and of itself. I just don't see how there's a lick of chance in overriding human behavior that turns the powerful into opp…

1) Everyone, even those with extreme wealth, can be helped to see the benefit of raising the floor for everyone. There is a non zero possibility that anyone can lose their wealth, or their children or grandchildren end up losing it. In a world increasing ravaged by automation, UBI is an insurance policy not only for those in need now, but possibly for you and your progeny.

2) Wealthy elites will end up just as poor and desperate if there's no one to buy the output of their companies, rent their properties, or do the real work that keeps civilization running because we fall into a social death spiral as more and more people get left behind and the rumblings of violent revolution grows.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#113

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jollybean wrote: post #39
anonporridge wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Land lords still exist in a competitive market and can't arbitrarily raise rents without collusion. One way to alleviate this problem is to have a harsher tax on vacant properties to punish using housing as a store of value and creating artificial scarcity in the market, e.g. like how the DeBeers corporation made diamonds artificially scarce and scammed the world for the past century selling a shiny rock.

"can't arbitrarily raise rents without collusion." ??? There's no need for 'collusion' - term is 'inflation' - which will 100% happen when we start printing money at that scale. It's unavoidable, almost by definition. Housing costs are already skyrocketing and this is moving into rents already, at least largely in part because of of massive Fed Stimulus. In the short run it might be better to just give some cheques t…

"term is 'inflation' - which will 100% happen when we start printing money at that scale."

So you get 0% inflation when we give money to the rich and bail out the banks, but as soon and you give a hobo $50 the entire economy crumbles and inflation spikes, right? Very conveneint ideology

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#114

Post by wyager »

anonporridge wrote: post #112
ravenstine wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure the few elites who own the vast majority of the wealth will agree and implement UBI in a way that doesn't enrich them or hollow out the poor and middle class. /s To be fair, I at least agree in the sense that we need to reexamine this idea of creating/saving jobs as something virtuous in and of itself. I just don't see how there's a lick of chance in overriding human behavior that turns the powerful into opp…

1) Everyone, even those with extreme wealth, can be helped to see the benefit of raising the floor for everyone. There is a non zero possibility that anyone can lose their wealth, or their children or grandchildren end up losing it. In a world increasing ravaged by automation, UBI is an insurance policy not only for those in need now, but possibly for you and your progeny. 2) Wealthy elites will end up just as poor a…

Free handouts don't "raise the floor" in a sustainable, long-term, or asymptotically effective way. Every dollar spent on UBI would yield better returns being invested in essentially any kind of R&D, unless your time preference is very high.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#115

Post by giaour »

nsxwolf wrote: post #54
asdff wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you have no rent control and allow property owners to take as much as they are able to off the table short of starving their tenants.

When I was a landlord I found it very difficult to even cover the mortgage, let alone cover association dues and maintenance. I would try to raise the rent a little in between tenants, and it would greatly reduce interest in the listing.

Normally, rent on a property is significantly less than the monthly payment on a 30-year mortgage on the same property. Where were you renting out spaces where people were willing to tolerate rent that high?

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#116

Post by hpkuarg »

deelowe wrote: post #109
dnautics wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define and evaluate unimproved value?

You can’t and that’s why such a program is popular with politicians. The bigger issue is with vacant properties being used as cash stores.

> You can't

Sure you can. Unimproved value of the land is simply the value of the lot as a whole minus the value of building that sits atop (well, improvements aren't always buildings, but that's a simple example). You can approximate it by comparing it against the transaction prices of nearby lots that aren't improved, or by taking the construction cost out of the purchase price of the lot.

> is popular with politicians

Land value tax in general isn't that popular around the world, and Henry George's version of it, where all tax is replaced with just a land value tax, even less so. As far as I'm aware, there is literally no jurisdiction in the world whose sole tax revenue is from LVT. Economists and idealists like land value tax; politicians, who derive a lot of power from the wealthy landowning class (who in turn would be the most hurt by LVT), not so much.

> The bigger issue is with vacant properties being used as cash stores.

Land value tax would be an excellent way to curb real estate speculation.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#117

Post by tryitnow »

anonporridge wrote: post #6

Anything other than direct cash transfers to individual humans is likely to have this effect. Institutions are simply always going to be able to navigate and take advantage of complex government programs better than real human beings. UBI or stfu. Time to try some trickle up economics. Also, for the love of god, let's stop prioritizing saving "jobs" that may or may not be necessary for civilization and start prioriti…

Despite being an avid supporter of UBI, I had to downvote your comment for the "stfu" part.

I have noticed an unfortunate tendency towards fanaticism on the part of many UBI advocates.

This fanaticism does not do the cause of UBI any favors - it just gives it the patina of a policy supported by mentally unstable crackpots, when in fact, a lot of excellent, well-balanced minds have advocated for UBI.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#118

Post by ClumsyPilot »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #85
ethangarofolo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it? We're talking about a mortgage on the rental property itself not on the landlord's personal residence.

> We're talking about a mortgage on the rental property itself not on the landlord's personal residence. Yes. Everyone in this conversation understands that. There's no relation between the amount and terms on your mortgage for your rental property and the market price to rent a given unit. If I take a 20 year mortgage does that mean I should charge more rent than if I took 30 years because my payment is higher? Shou…

Indeed - it is increadible that so many people just assume rent should basically buy another person a house by default.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#119

Post by giaour »

ethangarofolo wrote: post #77
rvense wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the rent cover your mortgage?

Why wouldn't it? We're talking about a mortgage on the rental property itself not on the landlord's personal residence.

Because that's how it normally works? Why would any renter pay that much? If they have that much disposable income each month, they could just buy instead of renting.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#120

Post by wyager »

jlmorton wrote: post #100
mchusma wrote: post #66

The PPP was designed to obviously benefit the businesses that needed it the least: 1) For any business that is fine or growing with COVID. PPP is free money. 2) Your business is in severe trouble with COVID, so you can't even have employees working productively. You can just give them the money, or use the PPP loan as a bridge loan, but you have to pay it back. It's low interest, but relatively short term and you had…

In hindsight, it should have been structured like Germany's Kurzarbeit ("short-time working") program. Impacted businesses simply furlough employees they don't have work for. Employers continue to pay furloughed employees 70% of their salary, and the government reimburses businesses for the cost of the furloughed employees' salaries. There are no loans, no unemployment insurance. There is nothing employees need to ap…

In hindsight, the government shouldn't have precipitated the conditions that justified these "loans" in the first place. The whole putative point of this (reducing covid deaths) was obviously ineffective and/or a red herring. Of course, if you think the actual point was liquidation of Kulaks, it was quite effective at that.
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