General > General Technical Chat
Working From Home - Impacts of Coronavirus
james_s:
--- Quote from: cdev on May 13, 2020, 12:10:16 pm ---They can't evict everybody. I think they should freeze all bills relating to housing (mortgages and rents and similar) At least for small landlords and low income tenants. (Because it's an unprecedented situation)
in a freeze for both tenants and landlords. Because in many areas, people just dont have the money. Many small landlords may be in a similar situation too, financially. The rent is the big one for many people, and landlords often have substantial ongoing bills too. Small landlords are the people who rent to most "small" tenants and more often than not they are not evil people they are just small businesspeoople. Some are bad landlords, but there are not so many of them, unfortunately, the ones that exist,, cause a lot of problems.
They should just freeze those bills for the duration, not eliminate them, not have a balloon payment either. That is the most fair to everybody and doesn't put the taxpayers on the line for the money either. That way a few months is tacked on at the end of the mortgage or similar. And they cannot evict people for nonpayment, nor is a big lump sum due as soon as the emergency ends. Similar with healthcare bills. (health insurance co pays and deductibles, which can be huge). People should also remember that once foreign corporations are involved in anything, (foreign banks, which may have invested here anticipating lots of foreclosures, really! Or foreign health insurers. The government is only allowed to pay these bills in a bona-fide emergency because of trade policy! A very very dumb trade policy. All that talk about Medicare for all, could only happen after we pulled out of that agreement. Otherwise, healthcare policy can only go one way. towards privatization and less govt involvement and more globalization.)
--- End quote ---
The potential problem with this is that one person's rent or bill payment is another person's paycheck. While it's true that some landlords are corporations with deep pockets, plenty of others are just ordinary people who own a second property that they rent out or in some cases an extra room in their home which is something I used to do to make ends meet back in the first several years after I bought my house. It's easy to say just freeze rent payments but that doesn't freeze the need of the property owner to eat, pay property taxes, perform maintenance and other expenses. Everything is connected, if you want to freeze one person's bill, you have to freeze the expenses of the next person in the chain, and the next and the next, somebody has to be left holding the bag.
I'd be in a real mess if I were renting a home to someone who lost their ability to pay and I couldn't evict them to get someone in there who can pay. Also it's going to be ugly when all these people who live paycheck to paycheck are several months behind on rent even if they are allowed to pause that many of them are never going to get caught up again. A shocking number of people seem to be perpetually behind already and seem to live on the assumption that they'll have more money later than they have today. I have friends who are always broke and gradually accruing more and more debt while deluding themselves that they'll pay it back "later". One guy in particular was coasting along for years waiting to strike it rich, I finally lost touch with him after it became obvious that he was just going to keep waiting forever for success to land in his lap.
Nusa:
--- Quote from: james_s on May 14, 2020, 12:43:31 am ---
--- Quote from: cdev on May 13, 2020, 12:10:16 pm ---They can't evict everybody. I think they should freeze all bills relating to housing (mortgages and rents and similar) At least for small landlords and low income tenants. (Because it's an unprecedented situation)
in a freeze for both tenants and landlords. Because in many areas, people just dont have the money. Many small landlords may be in a similar situation too, financially. The rent is the big one for many people, and landlords often have substantial ongoing bills too. Small landlords are the people who rent to most "small" tenants and more often than not they are not evil people they are just small businesspeoople. Some are bad landlords, but there are not so many of them, unfortunately, the ones that exist,, cause a lot of problems.
They should just freeze those bills for the duration, not eliminate them, not have a balloon payment either. That is the most fair to everybody and doesn't put the taxpayers on the line for the money either. That way a few months is tacked on at the end of the mortgage or similar. And they cannot evict people for nonpayment, nor is a big lump sum due as soon as the emergency ends. Similar with healthcare bills. (health insurance co pays and deductibles, which can be huge). People should also remember that once foreign corporations are involved in anything, (foreign banks, which may have invested here anticipating lots of foreclosures, really! Or foreign health insurers. The government is only allowed to pay these bills in a bona-fide emergency because of trade policy! A very very dumb trade policy. All that talk about Medicare for all, could only happen after we pulled out of that agreement. Otherwise, healthcare policy can only go one way. towards privatization and less govt involvement and more globalization.)
--- End quote ---
The potential problem with this is that one person's rent or bill payment is another person's paycheck. While it's true that some landlords are corporations with deep pockets, plenty of others are just ordinary people who own a second property that they rent out or in some cases an extra room in their home which is something I used to do to make ends meet back in the first several years after I bought my house. It's easy to say just freeze rent payments but that doesn't freeze the need of the property owner to eat, pay property taxes, perform maintenance and other expenses. Everything is connected, if you want to freeze one person's bill, you have to freeze the expenses of the next person in the chain, and the next and the next, somebody has to be left holding the bag.
I'd be in a real mess if I were renting a home to someone who lost their ability to pay and I couldn't evict them to get someone in there who can pay. Also it's going to be ugly when all these people who live paycheck to paycheck are several months behind on rent even if they are allowed to pause that many of them are never going to get caught up again. A shocking number of people seem to be perpetually behind already and seem to live on the assumption that they'll have more money later than they have today. I have friends who are always broke and gradually accruing more and more debt while deluding themselves that they'll pay it back "later". One guy in particular was coasting along for years waiting to strike it rich, I finally lost touch with him after it became obvious that he was just going to keep waiting forever for success to land in his lap.
--- End quote ---
There are small lenders as well. I (as an individual, not a bank) hold a property recorded mortgage on a property with three houses. The owner/landlord lives in one and rents out the other two. So two tenants play the landlord, who uses about half of that income to pay me every month and the other half for maintenance and personal expenses. This arrangement has been quite successful for 18 years so far. As it happens, I won't be in pain if that rather substantial chunk of cash flow is suspended for a while, but others may not be so well off.
james_s:
--- Quote from: cdev on May 14, 2020, 01:45:51 am ---James, it seems you didnt read, or didn't understand, what I said.
What is large scale services liberalization? Its a giant displacement of people in developing countries (the carved in stone - long planned "losers" of globalization) who have worked their entire lives, because they are suddenly more expensive than the new workforce. After training it the old workers (who may be young or old) are dismissed. By the millions. They are free to go.
Really, since this was planned for a long time (32 years, actually, since the meeting in Punta Del Este, Uruguay of September 15-20 1986, or perhaps even earlier, as two trade activists who had been at those meetings insisted to me, they said its roots went back to 1982.) The coronavirus must have been the answer to the rich's prayers. Providing a plausibe excuse and explanation. But the scheme is hardly new.
Its been hanging over our heads for a long time.
Look, I dont want to devolve into the usual mush people emit. But, people have to realize that the very rich are not rich because they worked especially hard and earned all that money themselves.
--- End quote ---
I didn't read it all, frankly it's a bit of a wall of text that bounces from one topic to the next and a lot of it is not stuff that particularly interests me.
I'm also not sure what the very rich have to do with this, I never said anything about the very rich having worked hard to get there, I agree that the huge and growing wealth gap is a very real problem, and people like CEOs and massively overpaid and that a lot of them got there by exploiting others, but this isn't really about them. This is about everyone else, there's an entire supply chain of sorts supporting housing and everything else. Take for example freezing rent or mortgage payments, is that going to come out of the pocket of the super rich guy at the top of the corporation that owns their apartment complex or the bank that owns the mortgage? Absolutely not, instead they'll lay off some of the underlings, property management, maintenance, suppliers, office staff, tellers, customer service, etc. Cut pay, cut benefits, cut corners, outsource, as income drops off it's only going to impact all the ordinary people who you're trying to help. If you have it out for the top you can't attack them from the bottom and expect that to accomplish anything useful because the top will be the absolute last to suffer, just look at any large corporation that has imploded and see how things worked out for the executives compared to the rest of the employees. Nothing exists in isolation, it's all connected and there's no easy fix.
Syntax Error:
BBC News: Coronavirus antibody test a 'positive development'
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52656808
EEVblog:
How many more off-topic posts do I have to delete in this thread before get the message to stay on topic?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version