I know "stimulus" is in the CNN title, but I really hate that term.
If the money is going towards rent and necessities, its not stimulus, its a life-line.
If the money is going towards rent and necessities, its not stimulus, its a life-line.
How many assumptions can be clumped into one headline. Can't let rents drop under market forces, can't let banks go bankrupt, landlords can't take a hit. Only the taxpayer can bear these burdens.
This is the part that should really upset the free marketeers. The market wants to change and CNN wants government to step in and promote stasis. Some might call it stability.
I don't think people should be out on the street, but someone responsible has to feel the pain for the mistakes here otherwise the root cause, whatever it is, will not be fixed.
In my opinion the mistakes are the decades long eroding of public services paired with the tolerance for growing inequality in society. Unfortunately neither party seems genuinely interested in addressing these root causes.
Now we pay the price for poor decisions.
Sure, that'd be fine (well, it probably wouldn't be, but I'll go with it for the sake of argument) if we had months or years for the market to react.
But it doesn't work that fast.
By the time rents correct you'll have millions of homeless. But I guess that's better because... reasons?
> I don't think people should be out on the street, but someone responsible has to feel the pain for the mistakes here otherwise the root cause, whatever it is, will not be fixed.
Huh?
The root cause is a once in a hundred year pandemic.
What other solution would you propose, other than a time machine?
Markets are generally the fastest thing to react to any change in circumstances. Rents in my area are already 60% of what they were pre-coronavirus.
The Aspen Institute report is, on the face of it, silly. 40% of renters are not going to be evicted. That would imply 40% of rental properties sitting vacant and there is no way landlords would accept that outcome. Landlords don't want (and probably can't afford) to have large amounts of housing stock sitting empty.
> By the time rents correct you'll have millions of homeless. But I guess that's better because... reasons?
The world has changed. People need to reorganise their lifestyles to cope with that change. It certainly isn't the governments job to try and maintain a delusional clinging to lifestyles that don't work any more.
> What other solution would you propose, other than a time machine?
Fixing a root cause doesn't help the current crisis. If I have a step on a nail then fixing the root cause (putting the nail away) doesn't change the fact my foot hurts. It helps for the next one; there is no reason to think this is a 1:100 year pandemic. It is probably a 1:20 or 1:30 year pandemic conditional on modern air travel [0]. People will need to get used to this sort of thing.
If you want long term solutions; loose construction requirements that promote abundant housing, monetary/fiscal policy that promotes low debt loads and high home ownership. If you want short term solutions; government guarantee of a place in mass housing (not particularly pleasant conditions, but indoors, safe & sanitary) + 3 meals a day. People shouldn't be starving on the street but people need to fund their own lifestyles - not taxpayers.
If you want radical solutions; end the lockdowns and let people work.
Be honest, what you're suggesting has nothing to do with cost effectiveness for the taxpayer and everything to do with believing that people should be made to suffer if the "market wants" (a phrase that you used above without any apparent irony) them to suffer.
It's definitely not about saving the taxpayer money. The $600/month we're debating in the United States is quite cheap compared to what you suggested. As a brief exercise in costing out your solution, consider what the government spends per day putting a person up in a barracks, incarceration facility, shelter, or literally anywhere at any time.
Nonsense. And two of your baseline costs (barracks and prisons) are silly because the cost includes total control over the lives of the people in the facility.
Take an annual cost of stimulus as $600/mo/person, and the cost of a homeless shelter as $2,000/mo/person (and that is probably an overestimate). Article says ~40M people at risk of eviction. That means a shelter plan would have to absorb more than 14 million people (the population of a large city) without rents collapsing to an affordable level. Even ignoring the fact that the renters will be out trying to find profitable ways to contribute to society, or looking for more rational living arrangements where they can afford it. There is no way the shelter plan would end up costing more.
The major issues are logistical in nature. I can imagine good arguments that it is a plan that can't be implemented if it actually turned out 10 million people needed new homes - but until it becomes impossible to find alternative shelters it is better to leave the landlords out of pocket. As a starting point the original alternative of "something has gone wrong, lets pump unearned money towards landlords" is worse.
> people should be made to suffer if the "market wants"
That is an attack that you cannot support. I've helpfully offered a bunch of suggestions where nobody has to suffer. Moving home isn't so bad it counts as suffering.
Those were examples, but when I wrote literally anywhere at any time I meant, think of anyplace where the government puts people up and feeds them - even just the cost of putting an employee up at a hotel and feeding them for a day - and use that as your baseline. The government just cannot do this cheaply, and changing the government so profoundly that this becomes their job is a weird idea.
Creating a new form of housing for millions of displaced people instead of simply preventing them from becoming displaced in the first place is tremendously expensive, immoral, and disruptive. There's just no reason to do it except sadism.
> I've helpfully offered a bunch of suggestions where nobody has to suffer.
You believe displacing millions of people rather than just giving them the money they need to make rent is not going to involve suffering. That is not "helpful," it is delusional.
> Moving home isn't so bad it counts as suffering.
The entire population does not consist of college kids away at school, or whatever you're fantasizing about.
Hotel accommodation is also silly; that comes with daily sheet cleaning and such. It'll save you some typing if you stick to relevant examples, is my point. You've listed 4 so far, 3 of them aren't related to the cost of providing basic shelter. Amenities are expensive.
> Creating a new form of housing for millions of displaced people instead of simply preventing them from becoming displaced in the first place is tremendously expensive, immoral, and disruptive.
Expecting taxpayers to swoop in and pay people's rent is also expensive, immoral, and disruptive. Taxpayers shouldn't be funding something they have no control over. And as I pointed out and I'm not sure you read, my option is much cheaper than $600/month/person.
> You believe displacing millions of people rather than just giving them the money...
No I don't. I have an encyclopedic knowledge of things I believe and that isn't something I ascribe to.
> The entire population does not consist of college kids away at school, or whatever you're fantasizing about.
That isn't relevant and you are representing that moving houses is an insufferable hardship. It isn't. I moved house this year, and I'm not even close to being a college student.
It's telling that you haven't offered any counterexamples, which is understandable, since the whole idea you've posited that government can do this cost effectively is just totally absurd.
> Taxpayers shouldn't be funding something they have no control over.
Unsupported dogmatism, and of a silly variety: taxpayers do this all the time.
> And as I pointed out and I'm not sure you read, my option is much cheaper than $600/month/person.
You asserted it without offering any real support for it. Congrats.
> Expecting taxpayers to swoop in and pay people's rent is also expensive, immoral, and disruptive.
Your calculation about what's least disruptive is completely wrong, so nothing else you say about this is making any sense.
> That isn't relevant and you are representing that moving houses is an insufferable hardship.
Becoming homeless is quite a hardship, and would be a widespread consequence if anyone adopted your weird policy ideas.
I used $2,000/month/person sheltered for my back-of-the-envelope calculation. What more do you want?
I'm not disagreeing, the issue is ~75% of your examples are bunk. You havn't really thought about what you are saying.
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• The above stands whether temporary or ongoing.
• Land distribution is kind of free as long as it's unclaimed and there's plenty.
People will go without medicine.