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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

#121

Post by [deleted] »

wyager wrote: post #114
anonporridge wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#122

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jollybean wrote: post #49
anonporridge wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did I say anything about printing money? Don't conflate a policy debate about how we spend the commonwealth with the policy debate about how we collect the commonwealth.

"When did I say anything about printing money?" Because that's how UBI will have to come into fruition i.e. under the auspices 'MMT' or some other made up term. It's 100% politically impossible to raise taxes on the middle and upper 1/3 to to the extent necessary to pay off the bottom 1/4-1/3 of the population to (mostly) do nothing and that's not even starting to consider the instantaneous shock of inflation that wi…

"but it's far more effective to have people work on doing things of value"

Are people who produce alcohol, cigarets, runs casinos and homeopathy clinics or lobby politicians in behalf of oil companies 'doing things of value'?

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

#123

Post by mlyle »

wyager wrote: post #114
anonporridge wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right now, there's welfare cliffs and other problems with benefits that make it difficult to climb out of benefit dependency. In turn, current programs incentivize people to not do things that increase their income.

https://www.atlantafed.org/economic-mobility-and-resilience/...

A UBI, instead, eliminates these problems and ensures there's always a reason to increase your income. This in turn removes deadweight costs, improves economic efficiency, and can be expected to produce gains that will compound over time.

Yes, letting the poor starve to death might be more fiscally efficient, as long as they don't riot or anything. But most don't view this as a reasonable policy option.

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

#124

Post by xyzzy123 »

wyager wrote: post #114
anonporridge wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doesn't this argument justify stopping ANY spending that is not R&D?

For example, a dollar spent on healthcare keeping a chronically sick person alive is a dollar that could instead have improved the welfare of all future generations.

Is there a version of this argument that doesn't throw grandpa under the bus?

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

#125

Post by ClumsyPilot »

hammock wrote: post #107

Devil's advocate: is this altogether a bad thing? Hear me out (thought experiment). COVID relief wasn't supposed to be welfare. Its purpose could be viewed as being not a safety net, but rather compensation for allowing the economy to be shut down. In that sense, it makes sense that much of the recompense goes to the people who were asked to shutter their businesses, put up signage and buy new equipment and reduce ca…

By the same logic, when British Empire made slavery illegal, they owed reparations not to people they enslaved, but to business owner's who could no longer keep slaves and lost their 'assets'.

Is that the logic we want?

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

#126

Post by zjaffee »

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…

Allowing the large and hard to replicate systems of human organization that are American corporations to collapse would be far more damaging than anything else. Even if you give people money to spend, if you let big business collapse domestically all that money will flow to large companies overseas.

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

#127

Post by cryptonector »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #125
hammock wrote: post #107

Devil's advocate: is this altogether a bad thing? Hear me out (thought experiment). COVID relief wasn't supposed to be welfare. Its purpose could be viewed as being not a safety net, but rather compensation for allowing the economy to be shut down. In that sense, it makes sense that much of the recompense goes to the people who were asked to shutter their businesses, put up signage and buy new equipment and reduce ca…

By the same logic, when British Empire made slavery illegal, they owed reparations not to people they enslaved, but to business owner's who could no longer keep slaves and lost their 'assets'. Is that the logic we want?

Which is in fact what the British did when they ended slavery.

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

#128

Post by qbasic_forever »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #111
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?

The fed has written far bigger checks to wallstreet. QE for the last 2 years has been something like 9 _trillion_ dollars injected into banks and companies balances. The ~$3000 in direct cash stimulus to Americans over the same time was only about $800 billion.

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

#129

Post by dnautics »

hpkuarg wrote: post #116
deelowe wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 politic…

So a unit that abuts the el should have the same per acre value as a unit a block and a half away?

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

#130

Post by ClumsyPilot »

e4e78a06 wrote: post #44
piva00 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The way to help the working class is to ensure economic growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats. This is just trickle down economics. The same catchphrase as "grow the pie to share it". It simply fuels money to the rich as well, in a larger proportion than to workers. We are actually experiencing the results of 40 years of that ideology and it doesn't look pretty. Growth is also looking like a very un…

We haven't had real economic growth in the US since the 70's when deindustrialization first began. If you discount by the real estate market's return instead of CPI you have negative or flat real growth. CPI includes a lot of goods that are long run deflationary like TVs, food, and cars. I'd point you to China for an example of what "rising tide lifts all boats" actually looks like. And to add to that - it matters a…

"Wealth redistribution has never worked in history."

Are you sure about that? Do we still have kings and barons owning entire states as personal property?

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