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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

#151

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

>Also, for the love of god, let's stop prioritizing saving "jobs" that may or may not be necessary for civilization and start prioritizing real people's well being.

The people who've finally managed to increase their wages and take-home pay thanks to the full-employment conditions that started in ~2019 or so might have something to say about that.

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

#152

Post by BoiledCabbage »

geoduck14 wrote: post #137
Guest42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a data source for this claim?

Every newspaper for the past 2 years. The government was THROWING money at people.

And most of those stories were business owners who used the money on themselves, let the business fold, and walked away. Not what's being argued here.

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

#153

Post by [deleted] »

germandiago wrote: post #76
rvense wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the rent cover your mortgage?

Because people who buy a place would like to reasonably be able to pay something that takes 30 years or similar to pay with the rent itself. That is a reason why you invest in the first place.

[deleted]

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

#154

Post by usefulcat »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #113
jollybean wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

If you give a lot of money to the rich, I would expect to see inflation in the stock market. Coincidentally, the stock market has far, far outpaced inflation for probably at least 20 years now.

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

#155

Post by BoiledCabbage »

dnautics wrote: post #104
rthomas6 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought-out version of this is called Georgism. It proposes a (close to) 100% tax on the unimproved value of land. Economists agree the tax can't be passed on to renters, for reasons I can't articulate. https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/your-book-review-progr...

How do you define and evaluate unimproved value?

I'm assuming by that they mean the value of the land.

And if it's done similar to an appraisal they see what market price is for a sale (which combines the value of the building + land). Then they can estimate how much it would cost to rebuild that building if it were completely destroyed. That's the value of the improvements. The remainder is the amount someone implicitly paid for the land.

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

#156

Post by foolfoolz »

koolba wrote: post #132
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Spending a 10s of millions of dollars to avoid 100s of thousand of deaths would be a deal many rationale people would be willing to make. It’s the ultimate ends justifying the means.

except in this timeline i don’t think we avoided any deaths we just delayed them

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

#157

Post by jimbob45 »

davidw wrote: post #139
jimbob45 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What good is it to build rental properties that will only be used for AirBNB? You’ve ruined even more of the environment just to enrich a landlord. It has nothing to do with supply - there are more houses now than can be occupied in the US. It has everything to do with misusing the supply we have.

Vacant housing in Cyanide Springs, Oklahoma is useless to people who want to be near jobs in Palo Alto. It has everything to do with the supply of housing and how it's been severely constrained over the years.

And what about when you’ve exhausted every square inch of land to shove more housing on? Then the city isn’t worth anything to anyone and you move on to the next city to ruin.

At some point, enough is enough and you have to accept that there’s no room for more housing without ruining the city. You could focus on reclaiming AirBNBs and vacant housing and you might be able to make a dent in the problem.

Just announce that your city is full and tell everyone to move on. Ruining the city will make landlords money and everyone unhappy.

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

#158

Post by Guest42 »

geoduck14 wrote: post #137
Guest42 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a data source for this claim?

Every newspaper for the past 2 years. The government was THROWING money at people.

The population received a significant sum of money but I haven’t seen a data set or statistic indicating people buying discretionary goods rather than paying rent.

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

#159

Post by greenshackle2 »

dylan604 wrote: post #78
rvense wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the rent cover your mortgage?

Likely NOT the landlord's personal domicile's mortgage, but the mortgage on the rental property itself. Landlords with mortgages on their rental property can go upside down on their notes too.

If you can't bear any risk of losing money perhaps you should buy money market funds instead of real estate at 20x leverage.

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

#160

Post by dnautics »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #155
dnautics wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you define and evaluate unimproved value?

I'm assuming by that they mean the value of the land. And if it's done similar to an appraisal they see what market price is for a sale (which combines the value of the building + land). Then they can estimate how much it would cost to rebuild that building if it were completely destroyed. That's the value of the improvements. The remainder is the amount someone implicitly paid for the land.

This is not great because suppose it cost relatively little to physically build a house but you sold it for a huge amount because it's in some chic architectural style that hasn't arrived yet in this city. So your house was in a crazy seller market and unexpectedly sold for crazy tons. Now you are being seriously penalized for your boldness.
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