5 ms·

And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy? I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find wor

And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy? I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory. This super-welfare scenario we have been in for the past 1 1/2 years can't possibly continue. What's good for the economy is the exchange of goods and services produced by the people that make up said economy.

totesraunch 5y ago
And people can't survive on slave wages. The people running the country (USA) are out of touch with the current reality many people live in. This isn't the ,1950s where a part time job can sustain anyone.
- gillytech 5y ago
  I hear you, and I agree that there are definitely problems with wages in this country. But the thing to really understand is that the value of money is the collective value of the goods and services exchanged in the economy. It's really just that simple. You need to produce, personally, real value in order to get enough money to acquire the services of another (room and board of some kind). There are exceptions to this rule of course (stock market, currency market and commodities speculators, looking at you). Think about this long and hard and anyone can see the connections between value traded for value. This is why a free market is the best possible solution to a large economy. When government gets involved, their authoritarian solutions (take money from one person and give it to another, without the exchange of true value) will never have long term workability. If someone wants to work a minimum wage job in America, they should not expect to be able to acquire luxury goods or anything of great value other than being able to subsist. It's nothing against them, it's just that the value being provided by the worker is not generally that valuable. This is in itself a UBI of sorts. Nobody inherently has the right to simply take from another (food, shelter, healthcare) simply for being alive and providing nothing in return. But showing up to a job and clocking in and clocking out every day, and doing one's job will bring in some return and you can then go out and exchange that for survival needs. Now if you want to live a little better you're going to want to provide more value than is expected and you will get more return on that. A simple example is waiting tips. I have definitely tipped bigger for service people who put in extra value. And above all else, morale and general happiness of a culture goes up when people are producing and exchanging HIGH VALUE. This is not the economy taught in schools. "Economics" as a subject has been mired down so thoroughly in complexity, trapdoors and dead ends nobody can agree on anything, and socialism and communism emerge as great concepts. It's just that "nobody has quite implemented socialism [which is communism] correctly" and thus resulted in untold suffering, misery and death throughout the ages. If communism is so great then why do so many people flee socialist and communist countries and try to make it to the USA? Because we have a FREE MARKET. Not total government appropriations and grants, yet.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    It's hard to take this seriously, since no economy in the world (that we know of) in reasonably-modern times has been a free market. I feel like the opposite of what you say is true: as economies grow past a certain point, market regulation is essential to avoid monopolistic practices and winner-take-all situations. If the US was a true free market, our income inequality problems would be even worse, and we'd live in a de-facto corporatocracy. No thank you.
    - gillytech 5y ago
      I think that if the US were a true free market we would have seen certain banks go bankrupt in 2008 and a more honest (or at least less stupid) system of banking take its place. Yes there would be pain, but there is already pain in other forms. You can't spray perfume on a rotten steak to make it any less of a problem. How about regulation that's supposed to protect consumers from big evil corporations are the same that prevent smaller players from getting a substantial foothold in the game and posing any kind of threat to the big players. Look, I don't have all the answers but I do know that without the exchange of value for value as the basic unit of economic strength there will be confusion, waste and contraction in a society.
gumby 5y ago
> And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy? Yes. It’s a liquidity crisis, and that’s how you fight them. Channeling cash to landlords allows the landlords to spend; an empty building does not.
michaelmrose 5y ago
We have already allocated enough money to pay the entire rent debt in America now. Purportedly its around 20 billion dollars. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/07/07/twice-as-many-us-renters-fell-behind-on-payments-during-the-pandemic https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta... 50B has been allocated but some states have actually distributed as little as 5% of the money allocated to them. The total cost to the economy of the disruption of millions of households is probably more than 20B especially considering we have already allocated funds for the matter. >I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory. Theory is often different from reality. Someone may not possess the skills needed for a reasonably paying job and may not even be able to make ends meet on what is in the offing. Even if they can make ends meet they may only be able to barely do so while owing several months worth of rent ensuring eviction when this becomes possible. They may be unable to earn more than the cost in child care they will incur given present conditions. This is especially true if they don't feel safe sending their kid to in person education. Obviously you don't intend something as silly as why can't Samantha go back to work for 400 a week while paying 340 a week in day care and somehow use the 60 a week to pay not only the 1500 rent but the 6000 backlog but if you really zoom in on people's lives you might find your assumptions fall short more than they fit. The idea that people of modest means are just milking the government while not bothering to pay rent because clearly this gravy train will never end is ill founded. People like that either trying to stay afloat and pay their bills or are puking up their cheerios worrying about being homeless and having nobody willing to rent to them even if they can pay. We shouldn't evict anyone who is presently applying for funds and paying in good faith and we ought to figure out a way to distribute the funds that are already agreed upon.
loxias 5y ago
> And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy? Exactly. The economy is strengthened by money being exchanged for goods and services. When people can't pay their rent, the pain goes to the mortgage servicers, and eventually the bond market. I don't want a market collapse. I think all of us don't want a market collapse. A market collapse would likely negatively affect the affluent commenters here whining and complaining about others not being forced to be homeless.

totesraunch 5y ago

And people can't survive on slave wages. The people running the country (USA) are out of touch with the current reality many people live in. This isn't the ,1950s where a part time job can sustain anyone.

gillytech 5y ago
I hear you, and I agree that there are definitely problems with wages in this country. But the thing to really understand is that the value of money is the collective value of the goods and services exchanged in the economy. It's really just that simple. You need to produce, personally, real value in order to get enough money to acquire the services of another (room and board of some kind). There are exceptions to this rule of course (stock market, currency market and commodities speculators, looking at you). Think about this long and hard and anyone can see the connections between value traded for value. This is why a free market is the best possible solution to a large economy. When government gets involved, their authoritarian solutions (take money from one person and give it to another, without the exchange of true value) will never have long term workability. If someone wants to work a minimum wage job in America, they should not expect to be able to acquire luxury goods or anything of great value other than being able to subsist. It's nothing against them, it's just that the value being provided by the worker is not generally that valuable. This is in itself a UBI of sorts. Nobody inherently has the right to simply take from another (food, shelter, healthcare) simply for being alive and providing nothing in return. But showing up to a job and clocking in and clocking out every day, and doing one's job will bring in some return and you can then go out and exchange that for survival needs. Now if you want to live a little better you're going to want to provide more value than is expected and you will get more return on that. A simple example is waiting tips. I have definitely tipped bigger for service people who put in extra value. And above all else, morale and general happiness of a culture goes up when people are producing and exchanging HIGH VALUE. This is not the economy taught in schools. "Economics" as a subject has been mired down so thoroughly in complexity, trapdoors and dead ends nobody can agree on anything, and socialism and communism emerge as great concepts. It's just that "nobody has quite implemented socialism [which is communism] correctly" and thus resulted in untold suffering, misery and death throughout the ages. If communism is so great then why do so many people flee socialist and communist countries and try to make it to the USA? Because we have a FREE MARKET. Not total government appropriations and grants, yet.
- kelnos 5y ago
  It's hard to take this seriously, since no economy in the world (that we know of) in reasonably-modern times has been a free market. I feel like the opposite of what you say is true: as economies grow past a certain point, market regulation is essential to avoid monopolistic practices and winner-take-all situations. If the US was a true free market, our income inequality problems would be even worse, and we'd live in a de-facto corporatocracy. No thank you.
  - gillytech 5y ago
    I think that if the US were a true free market we would have seen certain banks go bankrupt in 2008 and a more honest (or at least less stupid) system of banking take its place. Yes there would be pain, but there is already pain in other forms. You can't spray perfume on a rotten steak to make it any less of a problem. How about regulation that's supposed to protect consumers from big evil corporations are the same that prevent smaller players from getting a substantial foothold in the game and posing any kind of threat to the big players. Look, I don't have all the answers but I do know that without the exchange of value for value as the basic unit of economic strength there will be confusion, waste and contraction in a society.

gumby 5y ago

> And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy? Yes. It’s a liquidity crisis, and that’s how you fight them. Channeling cash to landlords allows the landlords to spend; an empty building does not.

michaelmrose 5y ago

We have already allocated enough money to pay the entire rent debt in America now. Purportedly its around 20 billion dollars. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2021/07/07/twice-as-many-us-renters-fell-behind-on-payments-during-the-pandemic https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta... 50B has been allocated but some states have actually distributed as little as 5% of the money allocated to them. The total cost to the economy of the disruption of millions of households is probably more than 20B especially considering we have already allocated funds for the matter. >I have been seeing a lot of headlines lately about how it's incredibly difficult to find workers as economies are reopening. If one has a job, they should be able to pay rent, in theory. Theory is often different from reality. Someone may not possess the skills needed for a reasonably paying job and may not even be able to make ends meet on what is in the offing. Even if they can make ends meet they may only be able to barely do so while owing several months worth of rent ensuring eviction when this becomes possible. They may be unable to earn more than the cost in child care they will incur given present conditions. This is especially true if they don't feel safe sending their kid to in person education. Obviously you don't intend something as silly as why can't Samantha go back to work for 400 a week while paying 340 a week in day care and somehow use the 60 a week to pay not only the 1500 rent but the 6000 backlog but if you really zoom in on people's lives you might find your assumptions fall short more than they fit. The idea that people of modest means are just milking the government while not bothering to pay rent because clearly this gravy train will never end is ill founded. People like that either trying to stay afloat and pay their bills or are puking up their cheerios worrying about being homeless and having nobody willing to rent to them even if they can pay. We shouldn't evict anyone who is presently applying for funds and paying in good faith and we ought to figure out a way to distribute the funds that are already agreed upon.

loxias 5y ago

> And paying people's rent for them is somehow good for the economy? Exactly. The economy is strengthened by money being exchanged for goods and services. When people can't pay their rent, the pain goes to the mortgage servicers, and eventually the bond market. I don't want a market collapse. I think all of us don't want a market collapse. A market collapse would likely negatively affect the affluent commenters here whining and complaining about others not being forced to be homeless.