This is a giant slap in the face to every renter who scrimped and sacrificed to pay their rent.
The constant bailing out of only those who take risks is just socialization of risk and privatization of profit, I.e. corruption.
Also, do you really think that the average American who has been saddled with the average amount of student loan debt would really be in a superior financial position if their debts were lifted tomorrow? The debt itself was preventing them from doing other economically productive things (like buying more goods and services, investing money, buying a house) that generate tax revenue. I wouldn't be surprised if forgiving all student debts turns out to be the economically favorable thing to do in the long run.
If it causes the currency to lose value, then it is a loss for everyone. Go ahead and help the average American, just do it by giving everyone the same amount of money.
This program is about compensating landlords who were forced to provide housing for free, much like how hospitals get compensated to provide medical care to people who can't pay. I see no complaints about the latter, even though it's the same mechanism as the former.
Un, that’s an uncompensated condition of Medicare participation, and there are lots of complaints from hospitals about the lack of compensation, and from small government types about the mandate and its affect on costs for those who can pay, and even the existence of “socialist” Medicare in the first place.
Do you think hospitals should not be compensated for giving care to people who can't afford to pay?
[1] https://www.aha.org/system/files/2018-01/factsheet-hospital-...
[2] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/29/increasing-...
You, personally, as someone who paid rent isn't owed anything by the government?
By rewarding only those who made risky decisions (whether or not they could have done otherwise), the system incentivizes that behavior. The effects of which can be seen in numerous events in history.
Note that I am all for redistribution of wealth if need be, but the mechanism must be fair. If the concern is why the government is spending excessively in comparison to tax receipts, then that is a different problem with the solution of “marginal income/sales taxes”.
No one is being punished here. If you managed to pay rent, your pay-out was not having to deal with sudden mass homelessness from mass evictions, and all the downstream problems that would create for you.
The government forced landlords to house people who couldn't pay. This is about making the landlords whole, not renters.
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.
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.
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.
I can deal with slaps in the face. It's mostly an emotional feeling of being wronged. That's different than homelessness.