Bezos backed company has over $100M in homes despite US housing shortage

Parts of Germany, for instance.

Belgium. Lived there for almost eight years. They have the highest percentage of royalty that live there than any other country in the world -- very little of them are actually Belgian royalty. They have an effective tax rate of 90% through sales and income taxes, but no property taxes on rental properties. So, they also have the highest percentage of millionaires and billionaires who "live" there than anywhere else in the world. And that extreme concentration of royalty plus the wealthy means they own basically all the properties in the country, and it's extremely difficult for anyone to actually buy a house there, even if they are a Belgian native or an EU citizen.

Also, if you're ever having any kind of work done at your place, the first question is "do you need a receipt?" Which is short for "is your employer paying for this, or can we do a cash-only transaction that would be much cheaper for you?"

And everyone has at least one or two tax-free side hustles. Some of them are even legal.

Don't get me wrong, my wife and I loved living and working there. Some of the best times of our lives. But we also have to be honest about what we saw.

But maybe that was just Brussels?

I'll do it.

The PPP "loans" were always intended to be forgiven if used for employee paychecks (or some other more limited uses) - from day 1. I know because I thought about applying but decided not to because I didn't think I could get both that and unemployment.

That money was given to businesses, and then their employees, because the government essentially forced those businesses to close for a time. Their employees could have been fired and then given unemployment, but the program was put into place to prevent that from happening.

The reason it was called a loan is because if you didn't use the money in the way prescribed then it was in fact a loan and would need to be paid back.

So, unless you (generically, not you specifically) were forced to go to school by the government and your loans were always intended to be forgiven the comparison is absolutely ridiculous.

It has nothing to do with loan forgiveness, and everything to do with the language of the law. The law that created the PPP program explicitly allowed for the loans to be cancelled. The laws that created the various student loan programs allow them to be "modified", but do not explicitly mention cancellation. The Supreme Court ruled that cancelling a loan is not the same as modifying it. Changing the interest rate or payment terms would be a modification, for example.

Since Congress did not delegate permission to cancel the loans to the Executive branch, it remains Congress's job to cancel them if they want to.

At some point there were 275 people on facebook

You’re either not in the market for a house or you’re extremely not picky.