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Comment by Mvandenbergh | Hacker News Reader

If you're being evicted, you have a problem. If 40m people are being evicted, the landlord has a problem.

The bank that the landlord owes money to has the real problem, but they are backed by the Fed printing press. So in the end future generations have the real problem, dealing with the debt. But 40M homeless people is everyone's problem.

In reality just paying the rent of 40M people is cheaper than anything else, assuming you care about society. Assuming a national average of $1000 per month rent, that's $40B a month, which is chump change compared to what the Fed is printing. Or, you can kick all these people out on the street, and give the money to the banks directly.

Of course its 40M people being evicted, not 40M apartments. So these numbers will be closer to $10B a month.

Banks don’t have much of that risk. MBS holders have the real problem.

Really a stimulus is just subsidizing inflated rents. And landlords are using the threat of mass homelessness to coerce the government into that subsidy.

That's a simplistic view that doesn't take into account property prices; not every landlord has owned property since the beginning of time, taking advantage of price increases.

Imagine a retired teacher who decides to rent out a garage apartment to supplement her pension - is she taking advantage of 'inflated rents' if the rent amount barely covers a proportional amount of the mortgage?

Additionally, landlords have to pay 'inflated property taxes', 'inflated utilities', and 'inflated garbage service' - these aren't discretionary costs for a property owner unless you advocate letting people stay in their apartments, but without landlord contributions to water, heat, cooling, garbage.

Retired teachers in San Francisco who own property have either owned it since the beginning of time, or have an incredibly rich spouse.

All your examples are consequences of inflated property prices. When I complained of inflated rents, the complaint over property prices was implied. By subsidizing rents, you also subsidize property prices.

Most landlords are not retired teachers who rent out their garage apartment.

Certainly the fiscal stimulus and monetary stimulus as been inflating the housing and rental markets, there's no question whatsoever. Generally speaking the asset holding class has benefited wildly from all of this stimulus to the detriment of the working and middle class.

As far as explicit coercion I really doubt that and I doubt it would be even necessary. For many, many reasons politicians are heavily incentivized to just flood the system.

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