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Comment by rubidium | Hacker News Reader

This sort of action is what we need across the economy. Cancellation or deferral.

Rent deferral, interest deferral, mortgage deferral... etc.

At the individual level maybe limit it to the lower 50%-70% of income earners. Cancel interest and utility/rent/mortgage payments for lower income population. Do it for 2-3 months.

The upper half will just eat into their savings some but won’t suffer like those living paycheck to paycheck.

I’m fine coming out of this with $15k less savings. Im not ok with my neighbor becoming homeless or permanently in debt because of it.

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Why the divide? The middle class already pays most of the taxes and not getting the benefit as much as the lower income earner and now they are not getting help as well? If you want to make the divide why not just the really high upper income earner vs the rest of the population, since most people in middle class, though they have savings more than $15k are just regular people like you and me, with families and responsibilities.

I personally don't like it, and I think a lot of middle class won't like it. If you want to do something like this then do it like Andrew Yang, no questions asked to all.

I'm not a lower income earner, but I don't have big ticket items as well (not even a car or house).

The lower 70% includes pretty much the entire middle class.

Those poor middle classes, haven't they been through enough? They can't even lift themselves up through their bootstraps like those deplorable "low income earners".

One social program for me, but not for thee.

Why the name calling? Nowhere we mentioned low income earners as deplorable. Fix the speck in your eye first.

> The middle class already pays most of the taxes

I'm not so sure about that. The top 1% pays 37% of federal income taxes. Meanwhile, the bottom 50% paid only 3% and 44% of paid nothing at all. Depending on the source you use the middle class in America is typically considered to top out at incomes between 100k and 122k. In either case the middle class pays less than half of income taxes. Then looking at the bigger picture we see income taxes only account for 60% of all taxes.

Sources: https://taxfoundation.org/summary-latest-federal-income-tax-... https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book

This can be misleading because it doesn't account for wealth concentration. When you realize HOW MUCH of the wealth the 1% control, 37% seems small.

That doesn't make the statement misleading. We tax income. The middle class doesn't pay the majority of taxes.

You may think there should be a wealth tax but the statement isn't misleading. The prior statement was inaccurate.

I don't think it will make sense if a lot of landlords start kicking out restaurants and small business, or a bunch of residential tenants start getting evicted.

Why? It's not like they'll find people to replace them in paying the rent. Everything will be shut down. Just hit the pause button.

This is a massive question: how do we nearly shut down an economy and still meet people's basic needs?

Today's crisis is not 2008's crisis.

The economic changes seem more akin to WWII when there was rationing and production shifted to war efforts. Now we are shifting efforts to healthcare, and the logistics of maintaining basic consumer goods to the populace.

Both in WWII and today we want the ability to spin things back up once (fingers crossed) the virus abates without having made the situation worse by displacing or further indebting huge amounts of people.

When surveys show somewhere between 70-80% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck the potential consequences of the economy grinding to a halt would be devastating.

Talk of $1,000 payments to people help move the Overton Window, but don't solve the problem.

> The upper half will just eat into their savings some but won’t suffer like those living paycheck to paycheck.

What makes you think the upper half does not also contain people living paycheck to paycheck?

They have fewer people in that category, and also more room to make lifestyle adjustments so they can remain afloat. Also, access to credit and family loans.

McDonald's franchisees are the upper half.

Feels a bit like this is a "pass it on" type deal- killing the worries for the people in the middle probably relieves a lot of stress for people at the bottom- if I'm not worried about making rent, I'm probably not going to be pushing hours quite as hard, nor am I going to be as strict about people coming in. (Personally, I'd be ensuring that all my workers still had places to live and good food to eat, even if it cost me personally to do so.)

Unfortunately, this feels like it relies on the same mechanism as trickle down economics.

Maybe, but in this instance the trickle down is personal... the people who benefit (franchisees) would be trickling the benefits down to people they know -- their employees. I think the calculus ends up being different when you are giving benefits down to people you know (as opposed to the more nebulous trickle down). McDonalds could also dictate how any rent deferral was handled.

In reality this is the effect of trickle up economics. Ie the upper class relies on extracting wealth from the bottom mostly through labor. This is a fight for their own survival.

I would like this relief to be tied to "keep paying people and maintain cleanliness at your stores".

To use the term, "trickle down" but with requirements for the trickle part.

Definitely upper half. Considering it costs about $400k just to be able to bid on a franchise...

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