[HN Gopher] America's Covid job-saving programme gave most of it...
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America's Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the
rich
Author : pseudolus
Score : 50 points
Date : 2022-02-01 21:20 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| sethammons wrote:
| [EDIT] - Ignore. The article summary and the article are
| unrelated so my comment is unrelated.
|
| I can't read beyond the summary, but this is true in my
| experience:
|
| > Its hastly designed scheme sent much of its relief money to
| people who didn't need it
|
| My neighbor's granddaughter (age 18 or so) got relief money to
| the tune of more than she had ever earned in her life. She got
| purses. Many of them.
|
| My wife's friend got relief money atop unemployment. She was a
| waitress and stopped working during the time and she was making
| more than she could if she was working.
|
| A buddy's friend's work strategically cut hours so employees
| could get the relief checks atop their pay for a net pay
| increase.
|
| On the other side, my dad's work dried up and he was able to
| stretch things due to the checks.
| NationalPark wrote:
| The article is about PPP, which gave out forgivable loans in
| the hundreds of thousands of dollars to businesses and self-
| employed individuals. The total cost of this was about the same
| as the direct payment stimulus checks, but went to about 10m
| borrowers rather than the ~150m who received the checks.
|
| As for your anecdotes, it was sort of the point of giving
| people money that they would spend it, "stimulating" the
| economy. It was not intended to become a nest egg or to satisfy
| some cosmically appropriate amount of money for an 18 year old
| to have. It's macroeconomic policy, not moral policy. In many
| cases, the cost of doing means testing so you don't
| accidentally overpay someone you think is undeserving is more
| than the amount saved.
| disambiguation wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220201222841/https://www.econo...
| Day1 wrote:
| This is generally how socialist govt programs work. Give money to
| the rich and advertise it as helping the poor.
| wdh505 wrote:
| "trickle down economics" for general economic policy, and
| straight bribing the rich to act well during social programs.
|
| The problem is "a fool and their money are soon parted", and
| the rich don't stay rich by parting with their money easily.
|
| I don't see an easy answer.
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Please enlighten us what proud plan that is brazenly American
| would you have enacted to keep the country from collapsing when
| everything was closing?
| lijogdfljk wrote:
| Conversely, it also seems to be how capitalist designs work.
|
| I ask: What designs actually help the working class?
| voisin wrote:
| Universal Basic Income.
| Cloudef wrote:
| UBI has the potential to shift the cost of ubi into
| everything else, then you are back to the starting point
| asdff wrote:
| This is not very great logic. People try and argue the
| same about minimum wage and it falls in its face, because
| economists who practice critical thinking note that when
| minimum wage has been raised historically, inflation
| generally did not follow.
| voisin wrote:
| Index it to inflation. Increase taxes on the rich to pay
| for it. Replace a ton of other costly-to-administer
| social programs too.
| [deleted]
| Cloudef wrote:
| All designs help those in power
| e4e78a06 wrote:
| None, because you can't get around markets even if you try to
| regulate them out of existence. As seen in the article
| countries with good unemployment benefits also have higher
| rates of unemployment during normal times. And don't forget
| every job being outsourced to China/Vietnam/Africa.
|
| If you confiscated all of Jeff Bezos' net worth you'd get
| something like $1000 for each American, once.
|
| The way to help the working class is to ensure economic
| growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats.
| piva00 wrote:
| > The way to help the working class is to ensure economic
| growth happens, because a rising tide lifts all boats.
|
| This is just trickle down economics. The same catchphrase
| as "grow the pie to share it".
|
| It simply fuels money to the rich as well, in a larger
| proportion than to workers. We are actually experiencing
| the results of 40 years of that ideology and it doesn't
| look pretty.
|
| Growth is also looking like a very unsustainable way to
| support civilization.
| asdff wrote:
| One need only to look at san fransisco to see how a rising
| tide lifts some boats but drowns many because there is no
| incentive to lift all boats, and all the incentives in the
| world to make sure a favorable few boats are lifted so very
| high
| bpodgursky wrote:
| You wouldn't even get $1000 per person because confiscating
| Bezos's wealth involves no significant re-allocation of
| actual resources.
|
| You just bump inflation up for a quarter and then
| everything goes back to normal.
| brimble wrote:
| Democratic socialism seems to be the label for the best mix
| of elements we've founds so far.
|
| "Capitalism" doesn't mean "anything to do with markets", and
| tells you exactly who it's for right there in the name.
| Capitalism vs. not letting free markets exist to any
| substantial degree, is a false choice. Relying on that label
| as if approaches that aren't _at least_ pretty close to what
| the US does are all diametrically opposed to capitalism and
| necessarily share nothing with it, is a way to end up arguing
| over things that aren 't real and don't matter.
| frakkingcylons wrote:
| The graph showing the PPP loan distribution by income is kind of
| unsatisfying because there's a broad range of incomes in the
| richest 20%. It would be much more convincing if there was more
| granularity in that graph. The 80th percentile household income
| is in the low to mid $100k range. If you have children and live
| in an expensive city, you're not rich even if there are a lot of
| people worse off compared to you.
|
| This is not to say that I'm disputing the reporting showing that
| there was abuse of the PPP program.
| warning26 wrote:
| Don't worry, that money went to _job creators_ and it will
| _definitely_ trickle down to everyone else!
| anonporridge wrote:
| Anything other than direct cash transfers to individual humans is
| likely to have this effect. Institutions are simply always going
| to be able to navigate and take advantage of complex government
| programs better than real human beings.
|
| UBI or stfu.
|
| Time to try some trickle up economics.
|
| Also, for the love of god, let's stop prioritizing saving "jobs"
| that may or may not be necessary for civilization and start
| prioritizing real people's well being.
| genousti wrote:
| Ubi would go into homeowners. Hell at some Point they will
| raise rent by the ammount of the ubi because they know people
| can afford at least that
| ericmcer wrote:
| Direct cash still has this effect. $1500 to subsidize rent that
| is $1500 to property owners.
| asdff wrote:
| Only if you have no rent control and allow property owners to
| take as much as they are able to off the table short of
| starving their tenants.
| pharmakom wrote:
| UBI would likely cool the housing market since people would
| have the resources to try cheaper places.
| anonporridge wrote:
| This is an important point too.
|
| Traditionally, humans have to live where they can find a
| flow of capital via the jobs available. If every human has
| a baseline flow of capital attached to them specifically,
| regardless of where they live, it potentially opens up a
| ton of possibility in where people can live, because they
| can do less well paying jobs but still live a good life.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Land lords still exist in a competitive market and can't
| arbitrarily raise rents without collusion.
|
| One way to alleviate this problem is to have a harsher tax on
| vacant properties to punish using housing as a store of value
| and creating artificial scarcity in the market, e.g. like how
| the DeBeers corporation made diamonds artificially scarce and
| scammed the world for the past century selling a shiny rock.
| davidw wrote:
| > Land lords still exist in a competitive market and can't
| arbitrarily raise rents without collusion.
|
| Well...kind of. It's pretty bad in a lot of places. There
| aren't enough homes in the places people want to live.
| anonporridge wrote:
| There's a delicate balance of property owners using their
| power to prevent new construction and densification in an
| attempt to keep their property values high to prevent
| competition and going too far where you destroy your
| local economy because the people who actually do the work
| can't afford to live there.
| shinryuu wrote:
| That's the trickle-up economics in action! I'd prefer that.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Utterly and laughably wrong. Anything other than basic
| education and viable community-level institutions is going to
| have this effect. Play stupid wealth transfer games and win
| zero dreamy wealth transfer prizes.
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