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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

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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

That's not the idea or reasonably foreseeable effect of UBI.

Rather ambitious near-term UBI ideas aim it right around the Federal Poverty Level, which is the income at which only about 13% of the population would be at or above their current real income if they had no other income, and those people are already largely getting some means-tested aid that would be replaced by UBI.

And, compared to existing means-tested aid, UBI reduces the disincentive to outside income.

You aren't paying the bottom 1/4-1/3 to do nothing.

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

That's the central idea of changing to UBI (which allows people to work on things of value without immediately losing side) from classical means-tested welfare (which does not.)

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

#62

Post by westurner »

burkaman wrote: post #56
westurner wrote: post #47

Would a [premined, escrowed] stablecoin token make it easier to answer these kinds of Transparency and Accountability questions in regards to government spending and government stimulus funding beyond intra-governmental transfers of real value? Said stablecoin token would be hosted on more or more resilient Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs; 'blockchains') with a - indeed more auditable - transaction record speci…

The issue here is not transparency, it's who the money was directed to. This is a policy question, and what type of currency you use is totally irrelevant. It's already very easy to see who received money ( https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/ ), what we're discussing is whether it should have been given to different people.

So, in your opinion, the "And then where did the money go?" question is entirely distinct from the "Did those investments have the desired impact for the desired audience, per the predefined criteria for success?" question? Who were we doing capital investment for, in hopes of them raising additional separately-accounted-for monies? https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-25893860 re: https://www.usaspending.gov/

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

#63

Post by burkaman »

westurner wrote: post #62
burkaman wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue here is not transparency, it's who the money was directed to. This is a policy question, and what type of currency you use is totally irrelevant. It's already very easy to see who received money ( https://projects.propublica.org/coronavirus/bailouts/ ), what we're discussing is whether it should have been given to different people.

So, in your opinion, the "And then where did the money go?" question is entirely distinct from the "Did those investments have the desired impact for the desired audience, per the predefined criteria for success?" question? Who were we doing capital investment for, in hopes of them raising additional separately-accounted-for monies? https://westurner.github.io/hnlog/#comment-25893860 re: https://www.usaspending.gov/

Oh, are you talking about tracking the money after it's been loaned out? Like for a given dollar we can see that it was loaned to Company X, then paid to an employee, then spent on rent, then spent at a restaurant, etc. If that's what you mean then I agree it would be useful for studying the impacts of stimulus policies, although I think there are a lot of other privacy impacts we'd need to consider.

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

#64

Post by gnat »

ericmcer wrote: post #13
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…

Direct cash still has this effect. $1500 to subsidize rent that is $1500 to property owners.

That's exactly what happened with student housing subsidies in NZ. Labour were elected and fulfilled a campaign promise by raising the housing allowance by $150 pw. Rents in Wellington rose $150 pw at the same time.

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

#65

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

wnevets wrote: post #45

And no one was worried about "socialism" when the tax payers gave tons of cash to the rich. Certain people only seem to worry about "socialism" when it helps regular people.

The same "no one" that was unable to predict inflation? Come on. Maybe you just listen to the wrong sources.

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

#66

Post by mchusma »

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 to start paying it back before COVID is even over.

I think in hindsight all of these loans should have clearly been truly loans, probably leveraging the existing SBA disaster loan program. This is a great program, was already working and distributed some money in COVID. 30 year loans at like 3%, with a personal guarantee.

Basically for any business owner who just needs money to bridge a disaster (the purported target of the PPP), this is way better. And anyone who doesn't need the money, won't take it (saving the taxpayers billions). It's unclear what the losses on this overall would have been, since its a loan, but I think its reasonably likely to be in the $10B to $100B range (instead of the $953B the PPP turned out to be).

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

#67

Post by julienb_sea »

pharmakom wrote: post #21
ericmcer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Direct cash still has this effect. $1500 to subsidize rent that is $1500 to property owners.

UBI would likely cool the housing market since people would have the resources to try cheaper places.

Alternatively, UBI would provide a new income stream to literally everyone, increasing everyone's purchasing power. In a pure supply/demand scenario, the equilibrium price of essentially anything will increase accordingly, i.e. inflation.

It's a fair point that UBI would result in some shift in market dynamic. But ultimately, most people will still want to get a job to supplement the UBI income, and high demand areas will remain high demand.

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

#68

Post by wnevets »

jdminhbg wrote: post #53
wnevets wrote: post #45

And no one was worried about "socialism" when the tax payers gave tons of cash to the rich. Certain people only seem to worry about "socialism" when it helps regular people.

> no one This is an article in the Economist decrying it, so I don't think you can claim that no one is worried.

>so I don't think you can claim that no one is worried.

No that isn't what I claimed, I claimed no one was worried. Using an article written almost two years after fact as proof against my claim doesn't make a whole a lot of sense.

Now obviously my no one claim is hyperbole but the fact the bill's passing was near-unanimous is my point. Using one of the very few no votes in congress as proof against my claim would make a lot more sense.

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

#69

Post by rvense »

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.

Why should the rent cover your mortgage?

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

#70

Post by anonporridge »

dragonwriter wrote: post #61
jollybean wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

> 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 That's not the idea or reasonably foreseeable effect of UBI. Rather ambitious near-term UBI ideas aim it right around the Federal Poverty Level, which is the income at which only about 13% of the population would be at or above their current re…

> And, compared to existing means-tested aid, UBI reduces the disincentive to outside income.

Important point.

Especially people currently on disability are actively disincentivized from doing any amount of work. Worse, they're even disincentivized to do volunteer work out of terror that someone might report them as able-bodied and they lose their benefits, even if they are legitimately disabled and merely trying to contribute the tiny amount that they can.

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