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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

#231

Post by spydum »

indymike wrote: post #204
j_walter wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I suspect the rent moratorium spooked most small time owners from rentingtheir properties, so they sold and cashed out. Ideally those homes would have been sold to new owners, but it turns out big property management companies were waiting, flush with new COVID cash, and bought up those properties and increased rent. So we saw the markets percentage of home ownership go down, and rent go up.

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

#232

Post by enaaem »

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…

Saudi Arabia have the closest thing to an UBI and Saudi nationals notorious for having bad work ethics and low skills. The economy is pretty much run by foreign workers. The country will be completely doomed if it continues this path and the oil runs out. The government is trying all kind of policies to prevent this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudization

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

#233

Post by wyager »

mlyle wrote: post #224
wyager wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 yo…

> 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. We already have the massive wrench in the form of benefits programs and EITC, etc. I say: restructure them to be UBI instead. Milton Friedman advocated for a negative income tax which is much like a UBI, and most economists agre…

I agree that UBI would be less distortive per dollar than what we have now, but unless there's a credibles strategy to make this happen, why bother discussing it? I suspect it's a pipe dream. Politics is a gang fight; any pretense of social optimization is just a thin veneer. Whose votes can you buy with the promise of UBI replacing extant welfare schemes? Every extant welfare scheme is a vote buying program which you're now nuking.

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

#234

Post by seventytwo »

eric_b wrote: post #182
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…

UBI is a pipe-dream. Look what happened when we tried it on a small scale with stimulus to "everyone". Rents went up 20-40% across the board, and demand exceeded supply in most industries. This will happen in any UBI scenario - the cost of goods will rise to meet whatever money people have. The reason is simple - we are not in a post-scarcity society. I don't know why people think we are. Desirable apartments, land,…

Ok, so now tell us what you believe WILL work. Because we’ve been trying “trickle-down” for 50 years now, and all we have to show is runaway wealth inequality, corporate “personhood”, and international conglomerates that can influence our politics while avoiding our tax.

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

#235

Post by [deleted] »

qbasic_forever wrote: post #128
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#236

Post by dnautics »

rthomas6 wrote: post #177
dnautics wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What would the unit cost if it were an empty lot? That is the tax.

Until you get the capability of temporarily creating a parallel universe and rolling it back, It's an unanswerable question, that's the point. Also you are confusing cost for price.

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

#237

Post by seventytwo »

enaaem wrote: post #232
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…

Saudi Arabia have the closest thing to an UBI and Saudi nationals notorious for having bad work ethics and low skills. The economy is pretty much run by foreign workers. The country will be completely doomed if it continues this path and the oil runs out. The government is trying all kind of policies to prevent this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saudization

And you’ve eliminated all the other possible variables?

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

#238

Post by dnautics »

rthomas6 wrote: post #175
dnautics wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, because the tax is only on the price someone would pay for the lot.

Restating the definition does not magically conjure a sensible strategy for arriving at that value.

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

#239

Post by dataflow »

eric_b wrote: post #225
dataflow wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a couple of isolated payments in the middle of a global pandemic that turned the entire world upside down the "closest thing we've seen" to an accurate UBI experiment? It just sounds like you just don't know about what else has actually been done? Here's one link; you can find more if you Google: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/is_universal_basic_income_th...

You have to be kidding me . This is your big experiment? "There are 175,000 24-year-olds in Gyeonggi, and for one year, each receives the equivalent of $220 in a locally negotiable currency per quarter via a credit card." So 1000 bucks a person for a year. COVID stimulus plus child tax credit went to millions of people... and even the smallest amounts were more than this experiment in SK. Like... what else ya got?

> This is your big experiment?

No, it's the first more-controlled experiment (more controlled than a pandemic!) I could think of off the top of my head. I don't know how to argue this when you seem to have no regard for the idea of controlling for other variables. Nor for the manner (like frequency) in which the funds are distributed. Nor for anything that I can see, other than the sheer amount of money dumped into the experiment. As if you can gauge accuracy by just looking at the amount of money dumped into the experiment? Aren't there a ton of other factors at play that can mess up the results (like the pandemic itself)?

> Like... what else ya got?

Like I said, you can find more if you Google, e.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_pilots

But again, I'm not sure what else to cite when your only metric is the amount of money. I'm not claiming there was any other UBI experiment that spent this much money. If/when you consider other factors then there would be much more room for discussion.

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

#240

Post by boomboomsubban »

eric_b wrote: post #218
crooked-v wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer is "people who are paid enough to do so".

Your response is smug and glib. You can make 150k without too much trouble as a plumber. Or a mason. And still they can't find people. If you can't find people to work for those wages now, you think UBI will make it better? Please do explain that to me.

>You can make 150k without too much trouble as a plumber.

So my 20 second research shows the average salary for a plumber is around $50,000, with 90% making under $75,000. I bet more would be willing to be a plumber for the kind of money you mention, but that's not standard.

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