13 ms·
It's still punishment; it's just negative punishment. Their punishment is having a positive stimulus (their money, their goods they sold to make rent, etc) rem
by curryst 5y ago
It's still punishment; it's just negative punishment. Their punishment is having a positive stimulus (their money, their goods they sold to make rent, etc) removed, rather than having a negative stimulus added (positive punishment).
There's also all kinds of opportunity costs. That money could have been used for tons of things, or they could have reduced their tax rate.
It may still be that this is the most prudent course of action. There is likely to be massive fallout when the eviction moratoriums end, and this seems likely to solve that. Pretending that there is no harm to people who paid their rent is disingenuous though.
- jude- 5y agoThis isn't about renters, though. It's about compensating landlords who were forced to provide a service for free. Like, are you upset that the government compensates hospitals for caring for people who aren't able to pay? If not, then you understand that this concept is not harmful, and there is no disingenuousness.
- lotsofpulp 5y agoI think a better way would be for the government to provide the same healthcare to everyone, rather than restricting benefits to certain groups.
- jude- 5y agoI'd love for that to happen, too. Why stop there -- why not also make it so everyone who wants one gets a place to live? Maybe do something like how Singapore manages housing? I'd love to have that as well. But, we don't have either of these things right now, and the act of implementing them as a way to solve the immediate problem at hand -- compensating landlords for a service they were forced to provide as a means of staving off mass evictions once the moratorium expires -- is off the table, given the constraints of the pandemic relief funding that California was granted.