Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 433 posts

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

#201

Post by tacitusarc »

geoduck14 wrote: post #181
wonderwonder wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the top 1% makes more income than the entire bottom 50% that average can look pretty skewed.

If you are going to compare income of different people, can you please indicate the geographical region you pick, and how you decided on the size? For instance, the income distribution of people within Beverly Hills is probably pretty OK - no need to redistribute anything there! But if you zoom out, you can look at the entire world and realize that the poorest of the USA are richer than many people around the world a…

As a US citizen, I feel my first duty is to my country. There are enough problems at home without trying to fix the world.

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

#202

Post by postpawl »

eric_b wrote: post #194
postpawl wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Rents went up 20-40% across the board" I don't think you can blame that on the stimulus. There are tons of other forces driving up prices, including iBuyers and the lack of affordable new construction. The stimulus barely paid a month of rent for most people.

The stimulus is absolutely a factor. I agree there are other things pushing on both the demand side of the equation as well as the supply side. But UBI will never increase supply - at best you'd craft it in such a way so as to be neutral (though I don't know how you'd pull this off - someone has to work the crappy jobs) But UBI absolutely will increase demand - and therefore prices until the same equilibrium is met b…

Saying that UBI would be canceled out by demand increases sounds absolutely hyperbolic.

What would you do instead? Continue existing trickle down policies? Use weird neoliberal tax breaks that require an accountant to utilize?

If we continue down the path of the top 10% in the US owning 89% of stocks, we’re going to have bigger problems than slight price increases on essentials.

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

#203

Post by koolba »

Guest42 wrote: post #198
koolba wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s many examples of exactly this happening. Here’s one: https://www.npr.org/2021/10/22/1046154251/they-refused-to-pa... The tenants no doubt received direct stimulus payments and never paid a dime of it in rent. There’s a reason why section 8 et al are paid directly to the landlords.

One anecdote from one website is not a data set that generalizes onto a population.

I never said it’s a dataset. It’s one of many examples of people receiving stimulus checks and not paying their landlords.

Hell, it’s the rationale thing to do anyway. If there’s a rent moratorium, you’re getting checks from the government, and you don’t have a particular large security deposit, why wouldn’t you skimp on the rent?

The landlord cannot evict you. Cannot call the police. Cannot really do anything. In fact, the landlords only chance of getting paid is to cajole you into signing up for rent forbearance.

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

#204

Post by indymike »

j_walter wrote: post #46
indymike wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pay the landlord, and landlord gets the money and tenant gets evicted. Pay the tenant and the rent gets paid and no one gets evicted. We saw this with the 2009 mortgate crisis - banks got bailed out and evicted homeowners. Had we paid the homeowners, I suspect most would have just brought their mortage current.

Not if the tenant isn't being required to pay rent. 2 years of government money in the name of COVID assistance and rent help...but nothing that actually meant it went to paying rent. Some tenants simply bought more stuff or saved it while the landlords are still going without rent payments.

I suspect that the real issue for landlords was the eviction moratorium which made it possible for some tenants to fall 4-5 months behind and forced landlords to live with it.

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

#205

Post by wyager »

mlyle wrote: post #123
wyager wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

One would have to be extremely credible to believe the claim that UBI would remove deadweight loss. Throwing any kind of massive wrench in the market can safely be expected to introduce it.

If UBI proponents ran on the platform of "eliminate all welfare and replace it with UBI" I would probably support them. But they don't, and they won't, because that's not politically tenable. I don't see a patronage angle where you can buy anyone's votes with that scheme, so it's never going to happen.

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

#206

Post by tacitusarc »

anonporridge wrote: post #180
CMCDragonkai wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't that mean UBI should divided a proportion of annual GDP?

Sure, pegging it to GDP sounds like not a bad idea. As the nation gets more productive, everyone's effective UBI goes up. If the real value of the UBI gets to be too high and too many people stop working in balance with automated labor, then GDP starts to decline and people start getting worse off and increasingly incentivized to find some productive work to do. Seems like it could end up being a self balancing syste…

In fact instead of lending Fed inflation dollars to big banks, we could partially fund a UBI with those same dollars!

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

#207

Post by wyager »

geoduck14 wrote: post #136
mlyle wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>current programs incentivize people to not do things that increase their income. At what point do they have "enough" income? At what point can we stop chasing more money? The USA already has a really high average income. Why do we need more?

I want the standard of living to increase. What is hard to understand about that?

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

#208

Post by darkerside »

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…

Honestly, in capitalism, even direct transfers to the poor end up going to the rich when they buy goods and services. Not complaining, just observing.

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

#209

Post by wyager »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #124
wyager wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, for any given time preference there exist capital allocations with equilibrated marginal returns between consumption vs capital investment. I'd argue we're not in one of those allocations, and if we are it must be associated with an extremely high time preference, and UBI would make it worse.

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

#210

Post by eric_b »

postpawl wrote: post #202
eric_b wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The stimulus is absolutely a factor. I agree there are other things pushing on both the demand side of the equation as well as the supply side. But UBI will never increase supply - at best you'd craft it in such a way so as to be neutral (though I don't know how you'd pull this off - someone has to work the crappy jobs) But UBI absolutely will increase demand - and therefore prices until the same equilibrium is met b…

Saying that UBI would be canceled out by demand increases sounds absolutely hyperbolic. What would you do instead? Continue existing trickle down policies? Use weird neoliberal tax breaks that require an accountant to utilize? If we continue down the path of the top 10% in the US owning 89% of stocks, we’re going to have bigger problems than slight price increases on essentials.

We already have the answer. 2019 was arguably the greatest year for the American economy on record. Real wages for the lowest quartile were rising at one of the fastest (if not the fastest) rates in history. Poverty as measured among Black families was at its lowest record since WW2. Unemployment was 3ish% and people were coming off the bench to work. Inflation was So what was the big secret? You won't want to hear it. First and foremost it was the tax cuts and jobs act. Yeah yeah, a giveaway for the rich the media says. Nonsense. Second it was getting the government out of the way of the economy and business. Removing regulations was absolutely a factor in the success. And finally it was using our influence to benefit the US first and foremost (tariffs, foreign policy etc). Of course the media has poo pooed all these things, particularly because of who was at the helm when they happened. And I don't expect anyone on HN to agree with me.
Post reply on HN