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

One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

axios.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 287 posts

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#91

Post by smabie »

tjr225 wrote: post #36
fortran77 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, suspend the payments through this crisis, but why should you not owe it?

What exactly are you trying to do here? Criticize my life choices? You don't know me or my decisions. What if I did exactly what you said but happened to fall in love with a wonderful woman who happened to have a bunch of student debt? Why should _anyone_ to be expected to pay their student loans if all of the other sectors of the economy are going to shut down? The biggest mistake I making here is even attempting to…

Because you made the choice? You can’t just decide you don’t like feeling paying because the economy is bad.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#93

Post by s1artibartfast »

macinjosh wrote: post #45

This makes no sense. Why would we give money to every American instead of just those that really need help? If you aren’t living paycheck to paycheck just to cover necessities you should have savings to fallback on. We should be giving money and help only to people who need it. Not people who have over extended themselves with credit card or student loan debt and no savings. People with means could use a lesson in pe…

One simple reason is that there is no time to means test the solution.

It could take months if not years to do income and asset verification for every american and determine who would qualify

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#94

Post by BoiledCabbage »

xyzzyz wrote: post #49
vearwhershuh wrote: post #13

This is how we should manage the money supply, and it should be monthly. Direct, debt free issuance of a citizens dividend to every US citizen. Coupled with a wind-down of the debt bubble. Maybe take Steve Keen's idea and require that a certain portion of the payment be used to extinguish any debts. Unfortunately whenever a president starts talking about this, he has a tendency to be shot.

> Direct, debt free issuance of a citizens dividend to every US citizen. Coupled with a wind-down of the debt bubble. There are three ways to make it possible: 1) issue government debt to pay for it 2) increase taxes to cover it 3) print money to cover it. Number 3) will cause significant inflation, so it will effectively be paid for by tax on cash savings. High inflation is really bad, it’s a terrible idea. 1) has t…

You act like these are wild approaches. But during this this current term we've already done #1 via the 1Trillion tax cuts to mostly the wealthy. Those (many of us on here) who won't use it for goods and services, but instead to further prop up your asset bubble of choice. Ie not improve the economy much, but make the appearance of improvement via higher asset pricess.

Then we've done #3 via re-introducing QE via the fed. Both back in September, and again last week, and why yet again just 30 mins ago. While we call them short term loans, they still haven't been paid back since the start of the GFC. And not only have we continued printing more via the Fed, when the fed finally tried to get some companies to pay them back a year ago the repo market siezed up last fall. The fact that there was a flood of Treasury Securities on the market to pay for item #1 (it increased supply by 50%) likely had a lot to do with it.

If you want the economy to function, then get money in the people who will spend it. What's the factor? For lower incomes every extra dollar they have, introduces 1.5x or 2x or something into the economy. And for every dollar given to middle-high and high incomes only 0.4x or less actually goes into the economy.

Propping up assets isn't a functioning economy.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#95

Post by dlhavema »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #37

That seems pretty silly. Me and probably a lot of other people would just put it aside and save because we don’t need the money. And for the people in some industries who are at risk of losing their jobs this is laughably little money. In Germany there is a concept called “Kurzarbeit”. Companies reduce work hours and salaries across the board and unemployment insurance makes up for some of it. This way mass layoffs a…

About 80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. So you are in the minority

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/01/09/shutdown-highlights-that...

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#96

Post by ralph84 »

vkou wrote: post #52
ralph84 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Landlords have more expenses than just mortgage payments. Property taxes, insurance, HOA, property management, maintenance. Suspend all of those too?

Which are either comparably small, or can be deferred, by virtue of just... Not paying them on time. You're better off not paying your HOA on time, than not paying your bank. People have expenses, too. Food, transportation, healthcare. Hard to deal with when you don't have a job. The landlords will have to deal with their other expenses, too. At least they aren't going to get their properties repo-d, after their tena…

Both HOA and property taxes are a lien on the property and will eventually lead to losing the property if you don’t pay them.

You seem to be assuming landlords are “rich” and tenants are “poor”, which may be true in many cases but it’s not a given. If you want means-tested benefits, just hand out cash based on means.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#98

Post by refurb »

xyzzyz wrote: post #63
lsllc wrote: post #47

I think something like a $10K tax rebate per person would be more appropriate. 1. It'll help people cover their bills 2. It'll put a shit-ton of money out to help reboot the economy when this all blows over.

Tax rebate doesn’t help if you don’t pay any tax, and if you’re out of work, you’re also not paying tax. For example, if you normally make the median income of $30k, but quarantine put you out of work for 3 months, you’re down to $22,500, your federal tax bill is ~$2700, and so this is most you can get from tax rebate. If you have children, this is even lower. While I agree that tax rebates are typically correct appr…

Then make it a tax credit. Regardless of what you pays in tax (it could be zero) you’ll get $X amount as a direct credit.

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#99

Post by abnercoimbre »

Miner49er wrote: post #9
tjr225 wrote: post #3

Am I way out of band or does that seem like a comically small amount of money for the average American? I live in an extremely low COL area and live well within my current means. Assuming my work dries up and I don't have any savings, 3k$ would buy me two months tops. Just to give you an idea of how cheaply I live: Mortgage is ~800$/mo, Car is a paid off 2006 Toyota Highlander, Student loan minimums of ~400$/mo, My w…

This is $2500 for your family as a whole, not $1k, sounds like it would get you through at least a month. $1000 per adult and $500 per kid.

It's unclear to me why most arguments leave this data point out -- it drastically changes the entire equation!

Re: One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every American

#100

Post by dumbfoundded »

tathougies wrote: post #44
dumbfoundded wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money in our pockets would also have a direct impact us on. Why include the middleman? Let bad companies fail.

I think the issue here is that companies could fail without doing anything wrong. It's not just bad companies that will fail, but also responsible companies that simply cannot weather a months-long economic standstill.

Other than the logistical difficulties specifically imposed by Covid 19, I believe good companies should be able to weather a couple of months of double-digit reductions in sales. Like if airlines or large events are forced to close down, I could see helping them.

Everyone else who simply has to deal with a reduction in consumer spending should take some responsibility for overbuilding for an overheated economy. For whatever cause, the Fed has predicted a recession months ago.

Post reply on HN