The extra $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits, on top of state UI, were designed to give people enough money to pay rent.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The US Supreme Court on Thursday lifted the temporary eviction ban, originally imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for 120 days starting in March 2020, but repeatedly extended first by the Trump administration, then by the Biden administration. It was finally-finally-maybe set to expire on October 3, 2021.
The Court said in the unsigned opinion that the ban exceeded the CDC’s authority to combat communicable diseases, and that it forced landlords to bear the costs of the pandemic.
The decision was expected. Even President Biden had acknowledged that the CDC’s latest extension of the eviction ban was legally iffy but the litigation would give the government time to distribute $47 billion to make landlords whole and get tenants off the hook.
“The CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination,” the Court wrote. “It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.”
The most important aspect of the national eviction moratorium is that it came of top of the extra $600 a week in federal unemployment benefits last year and an extra $300 a week this year, on top of the regular unemployment benefits. These extra unemployment benefits, on top of the regular state unemployment benefits, were specifically designed to give people enough money – in many cases more money than they had before – to pay rent and health insurance and other stuff.
The federal unemployment benefits also covered gig workers and workers that didn’t qualify for any other programs. Plus, there were the stimulus payments. There was money everywhere and anywhere. The whole thing was designed to allow people to spend money even if they lost their jobs.
Many people made more money under these programs than before, and it triggered a historic spike in retail sales. But with the eviction moratorium in place, people didn’t have to pay rent anymore, and could just spend on other stuff all this money they got to pay for rent. And they did.
But wait… There’s another layer of money now. The federal government has provided $47 billion in taxpayer money to states and local governments to make landlords whole and get tenants off the hook, now that they spent on cars, electronics, furniture, and other things all the money they got from the extra unemployment benefits designed precisely to allow them to pay their rent.
Governments have been slow to dole out this federal taxpayer money, $47 billion being quite a pile to give away willy-nilly. Rules have been eased to speed up the process. Landlords can now apply for a whole bunch of tenants at once. Etc.
The Court said in the case, brought by the Alabama Association of Realtors, that the CDC exceeded its authority with the eviction ban, but that Congress might have the power to impose it.
“The moratorium has put the applicants [the Alabama Association of Realtors], along with millions of landlords across the country, at risk of irreparable harm by depriving them of rent payments with no guarantee of eventual recovery,” the court said.
It pointed out that “many landlords have modest means. And preventing them from evicting tenants who breach their leases intrudes on one of the most fundamental elements of property ownership – the right to exclude.”
It’s easy to feel sorry for the plight of those tenants. But those tenants already got paid the extra unemployment benefits from the federal government, on top of the state unemployment benefits, on top of the stimmies, so that they could pay their rents.
But the eviction bans allowed those tenants to buy other stuff with this money instead of paying their rents. And now the taxpayer is paying $47 billion to landlords to make them whole and to get the tenants off the hook, in an economy where no one has to pay for anything anymore.
But this is not the end of the eviction bans. They live on in several states, including New York and California, and in many municipalities.
The whole idea of the eviction bans was that consumers don’t have to pay their debts and other obligations, such as rents, with the money that they received from the government precisely to pay those debts and other obligations, and that they could use that money to buy other stuff. And now the government is paying a second time for the same thing, this time to make landlords whole, in an economy that has gone nuts.
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This is outrageous! I won’t stand for it!!! I intend to put the full power of the Federal Reserve of the United States to work overturning this action!!!!!!!
Tostupid to run economy trucking wages out of control raise s s from 19,000 $ a year to 40$ while collecting benefits lowers inflation collect more taxes lower unemployment rate easy fixes oh I don’t have a PhD only common sense
“Common Sense is a collection of prejudices usually accumulated by about age 18”
-Albert Einstein
And he was known for being able to think well….I’m pretty sure.
I didn’t watch but it’s clear to see from the Yahoo! Finance headline that you’re still up to your old antics.
“Stocks hit record highs as Powell gives virtual remarks at Jackson Hole”
What next, sir?
I honestly don’t know why the market is reacting one way or the other. He didn’t say anything of substance.
Makes perfect sense that banks/FED have meetings at Jackson Hole. I have never seen a community which treats it’s workers with less respect.
Most of the every day workers live in campsites around the area, switching between close by free forest land accessible only by 4WD some years and paid Teton campsites. & now they are converting the few remaining “first come first serve” Teton campsites to 6 month prior registration sites. That blocks a lot of them out. No parking on the street or off highway. No program to get some of the enormous amounts of recycled bear spray to workers in the forest either.. Just never crossed their minds..
Sad what today’s ridiculously excess wealth does when it moves in.
I was there in ’71. Seemed like nice little tourist based town. Had a downtown square with a huge arch made out of elk horns. A local told me to make money the Boy Scouts would go out and collect elk horns and they got shipped to China and were ground up for ED medicine.
Lot of those Scouts probably living like elk now, trying to get by, from what you said.
J-Pow – LOL – Looks like Congress is ready for another $5T in print-and-spend this fall. No doubt much of that will go to make all their friends whole, except maybe the landlords in the red states.
So, how much of that is your Fed going to cover?
Most landlords are small. Very little of the set aside rental assistance, ever made it to landlords. Some claim that the extra $600 a week was a subsidy, but landlords did a lot worse since the pandemic, because of the memorandum and ever changing lock down rules.
The landlords who could possibly benefit from any upcoming spending bills, are the large commercial landlords, particularly those who build HUD housing and the like. Those large landlords, could be made whole yet, the small ones, not so much. There is nothing red-state relevant, to this bill. Commercial landlords, might also have their headquarters and live in a different state, than where their buildings are.
That is wishful thinking even as a joke. The “Federal” Reserve, a privately owned bankster cartel, and its billionaire owners care as much about regular Americans as hungry wolves care about sheep. We are not thinking like those Americans who cowered in their home as the pandemic escalated and might have made comfort purchases with the money that they received while too afraid to work or locked down.
The Seattle Times reports that 7.5 million Americans now face hardship as unemployment ends. Reportedly, according to the Washington Post, 6.4 million households are not current on their rent. Taking the second number, that is less than $7344 per American household if the $47 billion were distributed immediately to each household.
That seems like a lot but it is not a lot, at least in Southern California, where that would be about two months’ rent. Also, it will take most unemployed Americans months to find alternate employment that pays a living wage, particularly if they have gotten evicted and must find work further away.
What would you do with that money if you were getting evicted? I suspect you would want to use it to pay the deposit and rent for another home for a couple of months until you got a decent job, feed your family, pay health insurance if there was a risk one of you was ill, etc.
Anecdotal evidence in California is that people are not a couple of months but many months behind on their rents. Thus, unless the landlords want to take a hair cut and accept lower rent or payment plans, there will be millions of evicted Americans who would be wise to keep the money to get another home instead of just giving it to pay part of the rent debt owed to their prior landlord. That will mean many landlords will be defaulting on their mortgages.
If a lot sell stocks to try to stay current on their mortgages, or if tenants sell what few stocks that they might own, e.g., from gifts from their parents, sudden selloffs of a lot of stocks might trigger programmed sales. Combined with all sales that might trigger margin calls on stocks that have been bought with massive margin. This might lead thereby to a stock market crash, since our stock market has ludicrous valuations: e.g., Tesla.
Glad to have tipped you off to this news 3 hours ago :]
Hahaha, that’s funny, that I would get my news and data from the comments here. It’s on the front page of the WSJ and everywhere else, including on the website of SCOTUS. And as people whose comments were stuck in moderation for hours can attest, I was busy starting the article, then eating dinner with my wife, then cleaning the kitchen (I’m the cleaner-upper), and then finishing the article, and hadn’t looked at the comments hours. But now I’m going to check out for the day :-]
My household is the reverse. I’m the cook in my household. Ms Swamp is the cleaner upper.
This is NOT the way to marital harmony in either case:
I do ”most” of the cooking and clean up everything after my self; my beloved is a wonderful semi retired professional cook, and when she cooks, she cleans up after herself.
Any other system reeks of ”elitism” or some such ”ism” and should go away immediately!!!
And this has nothing at all to do with the ”dishes”,,, just the various and sundry and sometimes extensive results from cooking…
Going to join the old guy who ends every comment on here, many of them very ”pithy” with something to the effect of may we all find a better day, and will add,, way…
@Vintage –
LOL… As the Cleaner-Upper in the House of Wisdom, I have to disagree! You undervalue both the disease-fighting power of good cleaner-uppers, and the overall value of Division of Labor.
Mrs. Wisdom makes far better food than I do, but no one gets the kitchen cleaner afterwards.
In our case, the Head Chef does have an Assistant to keep her company, and the Chief Cleaner has an Assistant to help as well. Each doing what they do best, and working together = best results for all!
You guys crack me up! :)
I’m in the camp with Wisdom Seeker. Mrs. Ridgetop does the cooking, I am the cleaner upper’er, but she helps dry and I always BBQ.
As well, just because the news is out there, not all of us have the smarts to put it all together and analyze the ramifications. Information is readily available but wisdom is in short supply!
GOOD one JB,,, my main mentor used to tell me, unfortunately many many times because I was not an acknowledged WW2 ”blooded cadre” who had not seen the reality of that war, just a bit of VN:
”How soon we grow old, and how late we grow wise.”
Certainly seems particularly relevant these days, eh??
Truly unbelievable to see the exact, or close enough, scenario unfolding as was the case in Saigon 50 or so years ago..
That, and the current scamola from the Federal Reserve Bank, etc., etc., has absolutely confirmed the stupidity of the current and all recent past GUV MINTs…
My main motto used to be , ”CLEAN HOUSE, SENATE TOO.”
Now thinking it’s too late because of the extent of the stupidity,,,, and WE the PEONS need to do our best to prepare for a lot worse situation locally, nationally, and globally,,, and ASAP.
I am sending you a Wolf Street kitchen apron, Wolf, freshly off the Fed printing press, they are now diversifying into goods, for being such a stellar reporter of the Real News and a good guy to his hard-working wife.
Hear Here! Tis good to be a haus husband .. mostly, anyway … to be the, er, ‘king’ of the domestic realm.
‘;]
My comments bring mucho engagement and you know it—don’t poo-poo me!
I’m a liberal democrat but I agree with the supremes.
It made sense to not force people into moving vans when the pandemic first struck. But that critical period lasted 3 months, maybe 6 months. Over a year later? No you can’t claim a crisis that demands a moratorium.
It’s time to get back to free market principles, even if just a little.
“time to get back to free market principles”
The FED is already waving the white flag on the free market principles used by Trump to get the unemployment rate down to 3.4%. The U.S. unemployment rate may not return to the more than half-century lows recorded under former President Donald Trump, according to Esther George, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
Hey it’s “jimbo”….he’s baaaaack !!!
Just wondering….
1. we get these “low” unemployment rates, apparently 3.4% but the labor force participation rate (which I believe is a better indicator) is also low. During this time of “low unemployment”, the participation rate was around 63. So, something does not quite square here???
Labor participation rate chart from FRED:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART
2. Currently, if the labor market is supposed to be so “tight”, why do we keep getting higher than “normal” (whatever in hades that means these days) initial claims. Again, that does not square in my poor little mind.
Welcome to the “Great Deformation” ….I guess…. (to take a page from Stockman’s book).
Thanks for the chart trinket. I see the participation rate reverse the trend and go back up. Was that your point?
Anyway, why are you upset with SocalJim? Because he’s has been right for so many years in a row now?
Housing is a human right. Free market principles is an oxymoron as well as a contradiction in terms.
No, it’s not.
Housing is a human right…hmmm…so what type of housing? Is it a right for everyone to live in a Malibu mansion on the coast? Is a box on the street a house?
The truth is that every government program ever created is a joke. They cant manage the local DMV efficiently, they cant run the IRS efficiently, they cant run a military efficiently.
Competitive markets are always the most efficient manner to deliver value to people. Industries like housing, healthcare, education, finance, which are highly “regulated” or manipulated by the government, are the areas where there is huge inefficiency and inequality in access. An industry like the grocery industry, which had minimal government intervention, is highly efficient and delivers the best access and quality to all.
Honestly, in many countries a family earning $40K a year can live a decent life, due to much lower costs for housing, healthcare, education, etc.
Giving things away for free never makes for a more equitable society. When people get things for free, they dont value it and dont take care of it.
A very large percentage of the people living on the streets are dealing with either mental illness or drug addiction, or both. Yet the liberal mindset wants to legalize and increase access to recreational drugs, why?
Actions have consequences and if people are taught that they dont, they will suffer as a result.
@Genearl Strike:
Universal Human Rights are eternal, they would have been rights even 10,000 years ago. Freedom of speech, thought and belief; self-defense; and others are on that list.
Housing’s not on that list. Neither is healthcare.
What you’re talking about are important social values – a just society should reasonably benefit all, including the weakest, within its means. But that doesn’t make something “a right”.
What tears me up is how many people think “Housing” and “Health Care” are human rights while forgetting that freedom of expression and belief, and the freedom to act on those beliefs, are even more fundamental human rights.
It’s a fantasy to say anything is a ”right” of any species, including humanoids of all kinds IMHO.
Please try and prove any such thing with actual science,,, and please let me know if you have seen any previous science or even any solid suggestions proving any right, by that or any other name.
Been trying to overcome the logic and descriptions and conclusions from one of my grandfathers with whom I was fortunate to live for a few months on his home made sailboat in my middle teen years, his early 70s, while he was trying to live on only his SS to prove a point, and not touch capital, etc.,.
Great to heat that. What’s you address. Please clean up a room for me. I’ll be over shortly. I assume smokers and night owls are no problem. I have my own TV for the hard of hearing. You can clean the room during the day. I don’t need meals, I have my own hibachi.
Better, more succinct though perhaps a bit too creative/non linear/ etc., for most young folks these days, including all the youngsters, etc…., so called boomers, trying to besmirch the reputation of the war babies, silent generation, greatest generation, etc., etc.
Good one J2
How’s about I trot your a$$ to an igloo in Alaska and tell you this is the housing you deserve….
Yeah, didn’t think so…
Wait, you aren’t really Al Sharpton, are you?
Yes, it definitely is according to the UN;
“The right to adequate housing is a human right recognized in international human rights law as part of the right to an adequate standard of living.”
To do otherwise is not only uncivilized, but murder.
I thought GS’s comment was the dumbest one I ever read on WD until I read Lynn’s comment.
Who the hell references the UN and their fake world government rules? They have absolutely no bearing on anything in the world other than how to misappropriate money and lie and cheat and steal
Sounds like I’d rather move in with you than General Strike. I too am an idealist. I was waiting for Cher but she never invited me and she’s a little old anyway for my tastes.
Address? Separate room not required which is a bonus.
Entitled bureaucrats at the UN are not the arbiters of what is a “human right”.
They are all quite wealthy, if they feel so strongly about it why don’t they give up their houses for dead beat homeless people.
Anything that requires work to acquire is not a human right to have for free.
Why don’t you get up off your Cheetos stained couch and get a job
Exactly how is the term “free market” an oxymoron?
Because ANY market will ALWAYS be dominated by the largest players…and we now have quite a few of them…..the invisible hands are quite visible, i.e., Warren Buffet owns a big pair, I’m sure there are many others below our “information radar”.
Class warfare has gone too far, plain and simple, as Lincoln feared more than the Southern Army. He said that “Corporations have become enthroned”….they are much worse now. Doesn’t anybody ever wonder about what the Gettysburg Address was about?
Paul-‘free markets’ (see ‘laissez-faire capitalism’ and discuss) are akin to the old Soviet saying: “…we are all equal here, but some are more equal than others…”.
Believe that Smith favored ‘well-regulated’ rather than ‘free’ markets (not that human nature makes those any easier to realize…).
may we all find a better day.
91Cav,
“akin to the old Soviet saying: “…we are all equal here, but some are more equal than others…”.
That quote is from the animal farm. Orwell’s allegory about the absurdity and hypocrisy of the Soviets.
Find a better day and find a copy of that book.
And capitalism must pay for its crimes against humanity, we get it. And save the whales, free Tibet and BLMACAB. A veritable banquet of deep thoughts.
Water and heat are human rights. I will give you the phone bnumbers to my utility companies, can you call them and ask them not to send me any bills?
“It’s time to get back to free market principles, even if just a little.”
I’m not sure exactly why, but that sentence made me burst out laughing.
“It’s the oligarchy stupid.”
Fixed it for ya.
Scared the hell out of me.
There is no free market when the government can do whatever they want? When the rich get tax cuts? When they use the money printing machine so much is ridiculous?
I do not see this so called Free Market, the USA has one of the most government controlled markets in the world save perhaps for China.
In some ways true and in other ways, not. It is quite easy in the USA for a person to start a new business, whereas in some countries it is very expensive and difficult.
The biggest threat to the pocketbook of a billionaire is competition. So suppression of any competition is the mantra of the billionaire class. Increase the taxes on the up-and-coming millionaires, but make sure there are loopholes for the billionaires and you perpetuate wealth inequality.
The “Rich” don’t get tax cuts,,, they pay the income taxes.. Bottom 50% pay no taxes!!! Top 1%, yes a teeny weeny 1 of every 100 people pay 40% of income taxes….
A lot of really stupid people keep up the mantra that the rich don’t pay taxes, and that would include the main stream media,,,
No wonder this country has so many problems…
TG…the ‘teeny-weeny 1%’ could never field enough divisions from their own numbers to protect their lifestyles-taxes in exchange for the lives of all-too-human human soldiers should be the obvious tradeoff, here…
Maybe because there never has been any such thing ever???
Just asking..
Sure…..”free market principles”. They will let you get sick and die.
Sotto voce: I also agree with the Supremes, and I’m leaning toward the same side of the political spectrum as A.
In my neighborhood, I have noticed an exodus of, shall we say, rather shady people. They’ve been renters, and I’m guessing that they haven’t paid a dime of rent in quite some time.
We neighbors don’t miss their loud mouths, loud parties, and the loud traffic of their friends, families, and hangers-on. Oh, the trash that these people just couldn’t put into the trashcans? That’s gone too.
What’s up with the now-empty houses? Well, more than a few of them are now for sale or are being fixed up. I predict that the fixup projects will be on the market soon.
People who didn’t pay their rents and aren’t able now because they spent everything are now forgiven? This is a very bad incentive. Next time nobody will pay anything any more. Crazy policies.
Accountability is the first thing to go in times of crisis.
You might want to expand that concept, perhaps even quite a bit more dj:
It is well known and documented by many sources that what you say is true of the timid and cowardly, while, also clearly known, etc., is that the brave and honorable, etc., usually step up and TAKE responsibility in times of crisis, including in the ”crux of battle” of all kinds.
We cannot know that this trend will continue in future any more than we can know anything else regarding the, or any, future.
We can only hope the trend, in at least our species, for the honorable and responsible to step up in crisis will continue, as it certainly appears to me that that trend has been very very helpful for all of us, so far.
Without the stimulus they wouldn’t have had any money.
The emphasis in this article is on profligate tenants, the truth is that landlords are on the government teeth, yet again.
Autocorrect! Teet.
Still not correct g:
It’s either, ”teat” as is the case with all mammals who feed their young there from,,
Or, ”tit” as in the ones on display in various places, from the only ones available in the ”carnies” of the old days, always with some kind of concealing covering over the nipple due to local laws,,, to the current scene, upon which I cannot testify…
I realize from your comments on here that you are not in USA and might not ever have had the dubious pleasure of going to the ”county fair” and seeing the old and tired ladies stripping down to their underwear, etc., etc…
But we can at least hope you might take advantage of the opening of the CA/USA border to ”Come on down” and see at least a bit more…
correction accepted!
You’re either arguing for no eviction moratorium or that landlords should be providing free housing at their own expense. Which one is it?
Nope, I’m (correctly) stating that without the government paying for tenants, landlords would not have gotten their rent covered.
That’s got nothing to do with the rights/wrongs of eviction.
The market could not support rents demanded by landlords, yet they got paid. They were bailed out.
Except that if the government was not prohibiting evictions, the tenants who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) pay would have been out, and the landlords could have found new tenants, albeit likely at lower rents.
If the government is going to make the mess, it has to clean it up.
georgist, actually the landlords aren’t getting paid, as Wolf has pointed out. The gov’t allocated money, but it didn’t find its way to the landlords.
The big corporate outfits will weather things just fine, but mom & pop small time landlords don’t have all of the resources to stay whole.
The purpose of the rental assistance program is that it merely exists so politicians can point to it and say they did their part. Less emphasis is placed on making the program functional or efficient. This is why only 10% of those funds have been dispersed. Millions will be evicted without seeing a dime of assistance, and the money that was never distributed will be used for something else.
My guess is the money is long gone on other expenses. Like paying people 80K to clean poop off the streets. All those homeless people obviously didn’t get a dime.
Rental assistance pays rents the market cannot support, which is a direct subsidy to landlords (all landlords as rental pricing is relative), and to bankers.
If it were only a subsidy for landlords, the government would pay them directly and then go after the tenants for the balance plus interest. If tenants collected all that unemployment and didn’t pay, they should have to pay back any rental assistance that was paid on their behalf. But an easier solution is to pretend that their balances will be paid when most of them will get nothing.
Rental assistance is a subsidy if, and only if, the tenants turn around and hand that money to the landlord when their rent is due. Didn’t happen. They went on a shopping binge for consumer goods instead. The retailers got most of the money.
Alex – I think the logistics of that for a country as incompetent/corrupt as the USA are totally out of reach. Not feasible. It’s up there with “the USA is going to become like Japan”. In their dreams!
Rental assistance in CA during pandemic is paid directly to LandLord.
This happened to my friend. He didn’t pay any rent for last 18 months, collected extend UE ( $750/week Plus $300 EBT/Food Cash Plus Free Medical Insurance, better than mine Plus 3 or 4 rounds of stimulus checks ). He applied for rental assistance and Landlord was paid directly by CA Govt. This is in one way transfer of money from taxpayers like to me landlord. The landlord took risk by renting his home , tenant decided not to pay the rent, taxpayers on the hook for this.
This is anecdotal but true.
Bottom line: In CA, middle class is getting squeezed. The rich and poor are taken care of generally speaking as shown above.
Jon – are you sure you aren’t hallucinating? Many on here are certain this is absolutely not happening.
No, I am not hallucinating. THis is just one example I am aware of very personally.
According to the media, only 10% of the federal funding for rental assistance has been paid out. So, an example of one person doesn’t mean much if 90% of the funds are still unspent even after all these months.
yes, time will tell if it’s paid in full, and only then is it really a full bail-out.
and as noted single home landlords may not be able to retain solvency for this long, so not all a bed of roses.
however in general a bailout of landlords is a bailout of bankers, and the balance from most posters on here of “layabout renters” while not acknowledging that had there been no govt interference rents and house prices would have tanked a long time ago, is a bit rich.
Bingo
Yeah, it’s kinda like what is done for Wall Street, when they squandered their tax breaks on share buy backs, then went for bailouts, again!
It was appropriate for a few months but extending it was a freeloaders dream. As a left leaning independent, I could not be more disappointed with how this entire pandemic has been handled, on both sides. This free money has to stop
It was never appropriate with the advent of the $600 EXTRA PER WEEK from .gov. Why would you pay people more than they were earning at their jobs, AND allow them to not pay rent? Ridiculous.
I always assumed the 600.00 payments were intended to make sure middle/upper class could pay their mortgages, in other words, more subsidies for the banks. Giving to the lower echelon was just the cover they needed.
I am pretty far left, certainly for this site, but these programs were made for abuse. And let’s be clear, I am sure the abuse by the citizens of all these payments was fairly bi-partisan.
It was intended to keep people from being forced out onto the street during the middle of a raging pandemic and getting infected to the point of overrunning our hospitals like what is happening now in Florida and the rest of the Deep South. It was supposed to help those people who were out of work because of said pandemic. However, because of the way it was rushed though Congress, they didn’t set up any framework to vet for recipients who were actually out of work and/or could not reasonably find work including online or work from home jobs, which allowed tenants to stockpile money or spend it on tv’s, appliances, and furniture. Once landlords started complaining about not getting paid yet having to pay mortgages, Congress set up rental assistance for the landlords, but they screwed that up by leaving the states to distribute the money. And with too many GOP governors wanting to force people back to work, they chose to sit on that money instead. Having said that, I think the Supreme Court overstepped their boundaries in the way they reversed the moratorium, by making a ruling under the emergency docket instead of going through traditional arguments before the court, by refusing to quote any actual case law in their argument, and by refusing to sign their name to the actual decision. That’s as cowardly as most of the stuff Trump did in office. It also ignores the fact the pandemic is still here. I know the eviction moratorium was going to have to be lifted sooner or later, but the money available for rental assistance by the Feds wad twice as much as all back rent proclaimed by the landlords in this country. But I think too many landlords were more interested in throwing out lower income tenants so they could jack up rents.
I could see extending it for some, but with a lot more vetting as to where the actual need was. Some didn’t need it at all and some got far more than they would have otherwise.
I feel really bad for store clerks who worked throughout and got no benefits at all. They aren’t happy campers, to say the least.
Problem now is, once it stops everyone is going to be in shock when they figure out how much inflation there actually is.
The unspoken reality is how can Capitalism continue with repeated interventions and changes brought about by events that leave most unable to predict profitability or assess risks. I do think it no longer exists in the manner we were taught in years past. Note, I always think of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” when I think of what a true Capitalist is all about.
The chaos that is now is actuality only a glimpse of the new reality ahead. I look to Wolf who points out daily all these bizarre realities and how these past patterns are not hardly useful anymore as big data has made it possible for a few to see things before most understand what is or has happened. Just thinking about the meme investing and Robinhood makes my fuses pop in trying to make sense the the truth (what is reality) and the words we hear ( which are not truth).
When I read what Wolf said about vaccinations and the benefits of people being vaccinated in relation to eating in San Francisco restaurants I had a sudden epiphany of what this blog is really about.
Yes its true what Wolf says most of the time but here’s the problem. What good is it to live in outrage when the reality is most here are just trying to figure out what to do when jumping from the metaphorical “ice floe” to “ice floe” of investing hoping not to slip into the financial death spiral of “freezing Artic waters.”
The greatest value for me on this excellent website is how Wolf is the tour guide who helps us see the insanity…. Also, seeing the trends and realities in from the “back room real world” of life allows us here to make sense of what this may mean in the present and the future to each of our situations.
Most men are dead by age 78. I’m 66. Then, there is the quantity of years (in my case would be 12 years) and the quality of those years ahead. My guestimate is the steady accumulation of medical conditions likely means the latter half of this time span will consist of doing all I can to maintain independence in all respects.
Father-in-law earned a Phd from USC, married a beautiful women and had three beautiful daughters. Lives in the one of the most desirable cities in a giant home he build for 60K now worth 1.1 million with only a 150K mortgage. Now he spends his time in a 24/7 full care facility, slowing depleting his nest egg, crapping in his diapers and mumbling a few things he remembers. At age 76 he started the downhill trek. Now at 92 he is effectively dead while living.
Disraeli said “Youth is a blunder, Middle Age a Struggle, and Old Age a regret.” Yes, I think so….
Adam-elegantly stated and resonant (sitting on 70, with much of our life for the last seven years revolving around our care for her 98 year-old mother, who lives with us…).
may we all find a better day.
Airbnb will house tens of thousands of Afghans for free.
Why not the American homeless (now or soon to be) ?
Virtue signaling is a b….
marc delun,
I’m not sure it’s for free. Government will likely pay.
Airbnb is an illegal enterprise which has been allowed to exist through the hiring of hotshot lawyers to tie up lawsuits for years in the courts. And now the government is using their services? You can’t this sh!t up anymore.
Not everywhere. In many cities around the world, the local governments collect the taxes the hotels would have to pay as part of the AirBNB cost.
“Not everywhere. In many cities around the world, the local governments collect the taxes the hotels would have to pay as part of the AirBNB cost.”
I’m only speaking of the USA. Most of these neighborhoods are NOT zoned for hotels. They are illegal hotels that have been allowed to exist because they have attorneys providing them cover.
Yep, and there are instances of AirBNBs being disruptive. But I don’t think protecting the hotel industry is a good reason to ban AirBNB.
Correction: It’s not “Government will pay”.
We will all pay, via government spending of freshly printed money, in the form of additional inflation.
There’s no free lunch and there’s no free housing. But there is “that which is seen, and that which is not seen”.
So true, Wisdom Seeker.
The treadmill speed is constantly getting ramped-up while the oligarchs ride on everyone else’s back. Hybrid feudo-capitalism at its best/worst depending on your perspective.
Wisdom Seeker,
There is such a thing as free lunches and housing, it’s just that someone else is paying for it.
Wait, I’m losing the narrative here.
Is the moratorium an underhanded stimulus package that is causing irreversible inflation, or a cost the taxpayer will need to own up to?
Either too much money is being pumped into the system, or too much is going to have to be taken out.
Because it can’t be extremely both at the same time.
And which taxpayers should cover it exactly?
Is Wolf going to make a policy proposal?
Or is it just implied that every reader is going to render their own pound of flesh?
And after reading Wolf’s article about increasingly consolidated REITs, are we supposed to buy his cherry picked line of most landlord’s being of modest means? It’s strange how the characterization of the market changes based on who’s receiving government subsidy.
And is the moratorium a blanket delay of payment, or a blanket expunging of payment?
Did everyone really take their rent checks and blow it PlayStations and iPhones instead? The article seems to go back and forth on it situationally depending on which sounds more outrageous.
I’m starting to think Wolf might be at the end of his rope when he starts to make comments on policy instead of reporting the numbers from the markets.
Chris,
This article is one in a series that shows how all these government programs put layer upon layer of money on consumers & businesses, either through handing out money or through allowing consumers and businesses not to pay their obligations and thereby allowing them to spend this money on other stuff. This is one article of many articles in a series, including my last podcast, which you can listen to here:
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/22/the-wolf-street-report-the-most-monstrously-overstimulated-economy-markets-ever/
or read the transcript here:
https://wolfstreet.com/2021/08/25/the-most-monstrously-overstimulated-economy-markets-ever/
Funny how the entire thing was cooked up while president grifter and ‘throw granny on the street for an accounting error’ Steve Mnuchin had power. Funny how it contributed to squeezing small landlords while we are at ATH housing prices. Funny how the ibuyer phenomenon happens too.
Its funny to watch the predators work in real time
President Grifter, you mean the working-class guy who only held government jobs, yet is a multimillionaire?
Steve Mnuchin, whose best bud Kamala Harris, handed him a free “get out of jail by lack of prosecution card” when she was California attorney general, who is now potentially the president?
That Steve Mnuchin?
Former Pres T is a selfish, egotistical bully, and a dunce, but he hasn’t leveraged his public office for financial benefit in the way that, say, the Clintons did. His finances have been affected very negatively by his time as Pres.
The most grifter-ish behavior to my eye is Hunter and his Burisma Board and “art” career that would not happen in any universe where his father isn’t a person of great political power.
Wolf, that was a witty response. On a different note, your site/articles are amazing. Keep writing. Thanks for keeping us readers updated accurately. Best.
$47 billion the free market couldn’t find. Yet another bailout for bankers and their bag men (landlords).
If the government owned all the land and rent was a tax then the entire system would have collapsed in May 2020 or the government would have not locked down at all in fear of losing its rent payments.
In either case the government would be the banker and the landlord.
You are confusing the topic with logic.
Read this several times, sorry but I’m not sure exactly what point you are trying to make.
Read it slowly out loud.
Both this and the “confusing logic” post are really adding nothing to the forum. Condescending, rude, unhelpful and also very lazy.
Politicians cut
exactly
“The Court said in the case, brought by the Alabama Association of Realtors, that the CDC exceeded its authority with the eviction ban, but that Congress might have the power to impose it.”
Another example of the Supreme Court failing to uphold the Constitution., which grants only limited powers to the Federal Government. The Fedgov has no authority in the Constitution to regulate rental agreements unless they are interstate commerce. What percent of residential rentals are actually interstate commerce? The supreme court just sent an invitation to Congress to violate the Constitution by passing unconstitutional laws to regulate local rental contracts. Impeach all the tyrannical justices on the current Supreme Court for this and their endless abuses of the Constitution!
Ahhh yes, states rights. The meth labs of Democracy. Working like a fentanyl charm bracelet in Florida. Jim Crow? Voter suppression?
Yes, but the buses and planes coming from the Open Border are crossing many State lines before they end up in your backyard, America. There is an NSA drone video of Joe actually filling one of the buses up with very expensive gasoline after he put the hurt to the American petroleum industry. Pipeline contracts can be torn up, along with workers’ paychecks, via Executive Decree!
Do the Gulf Oil Arabs sell begging carpets to those who plead for more supply after American supply is cut off at the knees?? Going to be a very expensive winter for most Americans. A little off topic, I know.
The court did not rule that Congress had the authority. They didn’t rule on that issue at all.
The supreme court has generally taken the position that Congress has immense powers when it comes to regulation, money and taxation.
Just another slap in the face to people who worked all the way through the pandemic, even risking their lives. Yes, everyone got a few checks in the mail, which they didn’t ask for. But to see an extra $600 and $300 on top of unemployment benefits is a little much to bear to working people. That’s a lot of money.
And so many bums milking the system for all it’s worth not paying rent. I’m retired now, I never received any unemployment pay in my life. Thanks for the inflation eating away my retirement.
As Ben said, “ A penny saved is a penny… taken by the govt and given to someone else…
I’ve taken the liberty to update for current circumstances…
As I’ve said before, this is exactly the problem with universal franchise.
“Thanks for the inflation eating away my retirement.”
Elections have consequences.
A price determined by the market keeps society grounded in reality. Easy money allowed Fed government to be 31% of economy last year. That much spending done by the government is going to distort markets and further divide by society. The government gets further into the business of picking winners and losers.
Once the government starts doing price controls and capital controls you are getting late in the game.
Property managers may want to see proof of income before leasing property to prospective tenants.
The mortgage foreclosure ban goes until Sept. 30.
Mortgage interest rates are in a rising trend.
“Property managers may want to see proof of income before leasing property to prospective tenants.”
With the what’s happened since last March, don’t see why any landlord would have any reason to believe ability to pay will make any difference.
I’d guess literally almost no landlords ever imagined they would be required to provide “free” rent for 18 months.
With this as a precedent, what’s to keep the government from doing it again by claiming another national emergency?
The next “national emergency” is likely to be the upcoming recession or depression when the bottom falls out of the economy after this credit mania ends.
In reviewing a rental application it is common, almost standard to check with previous landlord’s for rent payment history, also a credit check. Guess what you didn’t pay for past x months, application goes into trash bin. Consequences happen, often takes time, but they do catch up. So now your on the street with your year old 95″ TV. What next.
“on the street!?” HAH! not likely.
read the Sacramento Bee’s latest tearjerker about the DECADES old squatters living on a prime island on the river, for FREE!
then they all cry & whine about nowhere to go . . . as a large color panel TV plays in the background.
are you kidding me?!? ability to watch a TV set in the middle of nowhere but yet they are so deprived.
absolute B.S: these people are NOT “homeless”. they are lazy BUMS!!!
“So now your on the street with your year old 95″ TV. What next.”
I guess they could sit in their new, air conditioned pickup trucks instead of the dirty street and post obscenities and other drivel on Twitter.
Already happening. Homeless man lives in his Range Rover:
Can’t make out where this is in the Bay Area.
Hell, based on the CDC’s logic, homelessness ITSELF could be a public health emergency, as people on the streets are more likely to get sick.
So on its own ridiculous reasoning, the CDC could prohibit evictions all the time, forever.
+1. And not only health emergency
Moe to it, in the new 3.5T budget proposal I noticed some rental assistance program – for which the homeless should definitely qualify.
So soon everything may be on par with Nordic countries :)
Well, lol, it is a health emergency to the people on the streets. Some of whom work.
You would think they would consider building low income housing units instead. How many units do you think they could have built with half of all the stimulus? With future rents leveraged even a bit?
I mean, you know that at this point many workers will not be able to afford rent. And many small landlords can not afford to buy in many areas- the return numbers don’t add up.
It’s an example of why central planning doesn’t work well. It’s impossible to conceive of reality on the ground for 330 million people each trying to look out for their own situation. Then there is the giant wrecking ball of unintended consequences.
RNY: please do not give these idiots any ideas. they can’t handle carrying out a dumb plan effectively. imagine how badly they would screw up carrying out a smart-ish plan? a-and think about the consequences!
It’s amazing to me. Every comment is deeply resentful of “low-life freeloaders” who were given UI benefits equal to the minimum wage. Every single person I know that received these benefits paid their rent or their mortgage every single month. But, here are the actual statistics:
43 million households rent in the US
17% pay more than 50% of the income on rent
5.7 million are behind on rent in 2021
14% of households are behind on rent in 2021
7% of renters were behind on rent in 2017 (last available data)
Source: Pew Trusts research
I don’t think 5.7 million households (4% of the population), who are by definition poor, are responsible for inflation in the U.S. and buying massive amounts of homes and cars, because they are freeloading and not paying their rent. I am appalled.
They weren’t giving UI benefits equal to the minimum wage. Between the $600 and $300 enhanced unemployment, regular UI benefits, and “stimulus” payments for people and their dependents, many people got far more last year. Some truly needed it. Others bought fancy cell phones and TVs and stiffed their landlords.
How do you know all that? Bring the receipts.
650 billionaires increased their wealth by $1.4 trillion during the pandemic. They may also have been receiving UI. If so, that would be the scandal.
Look, I opposed all of the “stimulus” including all of the QE which is what increased the wealth.
But do the math. A single mother with two children got $2,200 in the first batch, and $6,000 in the second and third batches. If she was unemployed, and eligible for $400/week in UI, she got that for 75 weeks, plus the additional $600/week for 17 weeks and $300 week for something like another 30 weeks. So let’s say $19,000 in “enhanced” unemployment, and $30,000 in regular unemployment. Taken together, we have $57,000 in “stimulus” over a year and a half. That’s more than minimum wage.
Where did all of the money go?
Food, rent, dry goods, transportation to take care of her elderly mother, birthday parties, medical costs, phone service, WiFi and/or cable television, insurance…
Your hypothetical analysis is not based on reality (e.g. scaled UI benefits, temporary jobs, gig work), nor does it demonstrate that your sample of one unemployed mother with two kids has extra money to spend and is therefore the cause of inflation and excess spending in the US.
Didn’t you learn when you were a toddler, that two wrongs don’t make a right?
Uhh, birthday parties and cable television are luxuries.
And we’re talking about why the rent wasn’t paid with all that money, so why are you including “rent” in your bucket?
“How do you know all that? Bring the receipts.”
I know a guy whose daughter was working part time, taking home less than $150 per week after taxes when she lost her part time job. She went from less than $700 per month in income to almost $3,000 per month. This was a detestable program by .gov. NEVER, and I mean EVER, under ANY circumstances, should you earn more on UE than you were while working. There should have been a rider in there that said “not to exceed current monthly income.”
So when talking about landlords you bring in the “650 billionaires”. They have absolutely nothing to do with landlords and non-paying tenants.
The billionaires and millionaires were feasting on PPP and most are not paying it back. It is appalling to see so many small businesses that really needed it not getting any PPP. None of this giveaway bullshit made any sense from day 1. Wear a mask and take your chances was probably the best strategy. I doubt that all this government bail out saved 10 lives. But if we are to consider housing to be a right it should, like healthcare or education, be nationalized and paid for by the government and everyone should be taxed for it. Houses could be allocated by lottery or we could build high rise Plattenbau like in Germany or Singapore.
The major error in gnokgnoh comment is that while he complains about the high rent and house prices he keeps quiet about what’s causing them. It’s precisely his beloved “cure” for the problem that is causing it. Gargantuan counterfeit printing and housing assistance have been around long before the current COVID insanity. This “assistance” increases housing demand above supply and causes the highly inflated price. The more counterfeit is printed and given to freeloaders, illegals, Afghans, etc – the more prices go up – it’s like poring gasoline on a fire because “liquids quench fires”.
UI is only one benefit in a smorgasbord of assistance to poorer people… so let’s not cherry-pick that one…
Generally speaking, most poor do not want a hand up, most would prefer a no strings attached hand out…
Most poor will spend the hand out , revert back to their mean, and start looking for another…
Being poor is a choice… of attitude and lifestyle… I came from very poor…. I know these people and truthfully don’t give a damn about them…
The reason I stand by this is that during the last 50 years, the govt has made it possible to not be poor… some took advantage, most didn’t…
The main reason govts care today is that the poor will spend the handouts… medical, cars, consumer goods,etc… a lot of businesses cater to the poor for that very reason…
And they can vote…
The Welfare Queen lives on.
COWG……”UI is only one benefit in a smorgasbord of assistance to poorer people… so let’s not cherry-pick that one…”
I believe that some states like Florida are way behind on processing UI applications. I know Wisconsin was still behind in early 2021.
According to a 2020 US NEWS….”Georgia and Florida have provided unemployment relief to fewer than a third of people who have applied. Arizona, Hawaii and Nebraska similarly paid out less than 1-in-3 claims by April….”
So part of the problem may stem from obsolete software UI processing systems ?
But I agree that when (or if) their Unemployment Claims were paid, they should have put it toward their rent/mortgage/credit card bills.
Those wonderful landlords don’t admit that late payers may have a good reason not to pay. Like their stove hasn’t worked for over a month, the dishwasher hasn’t worked in a year, they had to use the rent money to pay for repairs the landlord won’t make, like fixing AC or heat, etc. That’s the underbelly of being a renter.
P,
Absolutely correct….
See above post regarding the businesses ( small and large) who cater to the poor…
Just like the corporations who bought entire apt complexes to rent to these people as subsidized housing…
They ain’t doing it from the goodness of their heart…
It’s bad business for the poor not to be poor…
been there. done that. sought out legal advice. let’s just say in the long run it worked out in a less than ideal manner. it’s a waste of time and money to fight the landlord in court, even when the legal counsel is free!
Americans are in the total mess they are in because:
1. they don’t take the time to read up and comprehend how prices are set, nor think about rentier activity vs wealth creation
2. they lazily punch down, every single time
And that message comes to them from the media every day. They just pass it on, without a whimper.
Please explain how wealth creation does not result in rentier activity.
I’m curious. To me, your statement makes absolutely no sense.
Just look up the definition of rentier activity as per Keynes, Smith.
@Georgist: you lost my respect by overgeneralizing to “all Americans” there, and gratuitously tossing in “every single time”.
Every group, every nation has good people and bad, areas of strength and areas of weakness, times of distress and times of joy.
Well I’ll have to soldier on without your respect.
I can’t have anything other than disdain for a nation that spends $2 trillion on a war and has people on the streets. Who have the highest incarceration rates. People selling plasma for insulin.
I hope I never fall to the level where that elicits anything other than a wince of disgust every time I think of it. It’s grotesque.
Also I wonder if you are one of the few non-boomer on here?
A feature of the last 20 years of education in the west seems to be an obsession with non-generalizing / stereotyping. It’s really very odd.
If someone writes a cogent argument about something in the general case, the education system seems to have taught everyone to look for an exception to this general case, present it, then dismiss the entire general idea.
But we are not doing math here. To hold up your hand and say “actually I’m American and I don’t think that” isn’t really relevant, in the general case. Even if you know 100 people who agree with you.
The USA spent $2 trillion in Afghanistan while people in the USA die for lack of insulin, shelter or mental health care. In aggregate the country has decided they are broadly happy with that system. Therefore I condemn it.
Generalizing is both useful and essential.
ps would be interested in your age group as you could be older, but I think this is a feature of the last 20 years of western education , doesn’t have to be exact age a decade will do.
Georgist,
Since you seem to have an interesting outlook on life why don’t you tell us about yourself. How do you earn a living? What are you doing to improve the world?
No thanks won’t be doxing myself.
Not sure why everything has to be reduced to the individual as a prelude to another attempt at “Mount Ad Hominem”, every single post.
g,
I would probably enjoy sittting down with you for a cup of coffee…
But if you order a Soy latte with extra foam and cinnamon and have them put your initials in the foam, I’m leaving…
I do enjoy your thoughts…
“2. they lazily punch down, every single time”
absolutely. This site’s commenters are a perfect example.
5.7 million households are only those behind on rent. Then you have 2.2 million on Section 8 vouchers, another million on public housing, plus welfare, child assistance, etc all paid by gov counterfeit. 9 million taxpayer funded households are whooping 20% of all renters, your math is way wrong. 20% increase in demand is generally able to move prices up by 200% to 400%, so we’re well withing basic theory.
Gnokgnoh, your comment makes no sense. Stop the money printing, pay back gov debt, bring back the Fed balance sheet to $1 Trillion, then we’ll see all economic effects clearly without the backhanded inflation stealing.
The government deprived me of my source of income by shutting down businesses. Now the government needs to make me whole. Multiply that by 10 million. Also the government should forgive my student loans. Thanks, uncle Joe!
Based on what I am seeing in the very poor educational system we now have in this country, where everyone is a winner, we have just reinforced this set of non-achieving theorems to the adult population. I can be a renter, or a mortgage holder, or a landlord in America during a crisis, and still come out a winner with my pockets overflowing with cash. Don’t worry. Sit on you ever widening fanny, watch cable, play video games cause Uncle Sam and Friar Powell have your back and your butt.
If this country every makes it to Mars, they had better take the remaining Americans with them on the first trip. No country lasts long on the dole, because their currency and their Debt Paper eventually find no buyers.
I told all that would listen that this Eviction Ban Crap was illegal. Now if we could just do something about the Fed and the Federal Government, we all may have a chance to be Martians some day!!!
Hard work is no longer rewarded, only speculation is. Hey, let’s just keep pumping the funny money and everybody can stay home and get high while watching their crypto fund their entire life and retirement. I mean, it’s totally sustainable and stuff.
Back in my day, I had to walk a mile uphill to school every day, both ways.
In three feet of snow with the temperature ten degrees below zero in your bare feet, and you had to occasionally kill a grizzly bear or hungry wolf with your Trapper Keeper notebook.😄
Is the end to the program effective immediately?
How many other edicts enforced as law by unelected government bureaucracies can be challenged using this SCOTUS precedent?
“No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner prescribed by law.” -The Third Amendment
This has never been litigated before the United States Supreme Court, and in this ruling, the Court hides from the 3rd, and does not address it directly.
But in the AMICUS CURIAE filed by the Alabama Association of Realtors, two fundamental points are made.
2.0 Argument: 2.1 The Third Amendment:
“The Third Amendment protects fundamental rights of Americans to be free from military oppression and be master of one’s domain.”
3.0 Conclusion:
“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused hardship for millions of Americans. What it should not cause is the deprivation of Constitutional liberties, chief among them the freedom from quartering without consent during peacetime.”
Six members of the Supreme Court have stated: “If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”
Three members of the Supreme Court have stated, as written by Justice Breyer, “Applicants raise contested legal questions about an important federal statute on which the lower courts are split and on which this Court (USSC) has never actually spoken.
Wolf has stated that the economy has gone nuts. He is right, of course.
And finally, I state that the President, Congress and Supreme Court need to obey and respect the Bill of Rights! That should not be asking too much from the three branches of the United States government. But sadly, it is. The U.S. government has gone nuts.
it expires on Oct 3rd. One more month of free rent!
One more month of hiding the fact that due to a big increase in unemployment, many are unable to make their rent, yet the landlords are still getting it paid, by the government.
Landlords are getting rents the market cannot support. They are on stimmy.
“One more month of hiding the fact that due to a big increase in unemployment, many are unable to make their rent…”
Nonsense. The UE stimmy bennies still flow. Are you a commie from Soviet Georgia?
Forum in America.
Say something that doesn’t include the words “god bless the free market”.
Get accused of being a commie by yet another indoctrinated, binary lunatic.
Can’t you guys try a little bit harder?
“Get accused of being a commie by yet another indoctrinated, binary lunatic.”
Looks like I triggered you, huh little guy? It was an honest question. The moniker “Georgist” in conjunction with your commie screed all around these parts led to the conclusion.
You must make jack shit if you think that the current UE bennies are substantial. Must suck to be poor
Just let me understand.
The Gov’t gives me an extra $300 per week, $1,200 per month, so I can pay my rent, but then says I can’t be evicted cause I’m not paying my rent.
What fevered minds come up with, or justify this logic?
Take a look at Maxine Waters for a perfect example of why the country is finished.
She’s an example of what you get when you allow anyone aged 18 and with a pulse to vote.
Yeah it’s called Democracy. Or would you prefer totalitarianism? I have a sneaking suspicion based on your previous posts that you might
Right-careful, you’ll be significantly reducing your pool of cannon fodder if you raise the voting eligibility age…
may we all find a better day.
CreditGB……”What fevered minds come up with, or justify this logic?”
Possibly the ones that know some states max out the u/i at $275 week.
The minimum U/I payout may be as little as $5 per week.
You missed the whole point. It should have been an “either or” proposition. EITHER you collect enhanced UE and pay rent, OR you don’t get it and cannot be evicted.
Louisiana is $247 max a week. People would surely sit home and get fat on that bankroll.
The point of such a low amount is to discourage people from staying on it.
I agree that no one stays on unemployment voluntarily for $247 a week. But for $547 a week? Absolutely!
Which was $847 per week when the “extra $600” was rolled out. Then it was “TIME FOR A NEW CAR!”
I disagree with that. I live on about $247 / week even though I could spend like most upper middle class if I wanted.
I imagine there are folks in rural Louisiana that can stretch that $247 out while enjoying fishing and general outdoor activities.
Old School,
The max amount of $247 is for high earners. Some minimum wage worker in New Orleans or elsewhere would get a much lower amount. I looked up the minimum amount paid, it is $10. Try living on that bankroll.
Also that $1200 per month will be on TOP of the regular state UE benefits. Not to mention 3 stimulus checks or 5 if you are in CA, PPP loans, new child tax credits, 25% increase in welfare, etc.
Of course, there’s unholy grail of mort ungaged forbearance to consider as well … tis related, but yet a different cross to bare, on a whole ‘nother graveyard.
Hopefully our host will delve into THAT pit of inconvenience in the near future.
Yes, again anything to forestall price discovery in the land market.
Another subsidy to land owners.
Sounds like you don’t especially care for landowners. So who should own the land then?
Land value tax is about society getting the unimproved value of the land, and letting the land owner collect on the improvement to the land.
This is all entirely consistent with capitalism, it’s just not very, very simple and people can’t be bothered to read up on it.
Example 1:
man buys square plot of land with not much around it
society builds up roads, metro, hospital, schools etc
man reaps huge profit on sale of land based on location value, having done nothing to it
Example 2:
man buys land, it is an empty tarmac car park, nothing there really
man builds up an 8 story apartment on it, quality building, nice homes, people love it
man has created value, collects on the rent on the building, big profit, he spends it as he wishes
Now if you are going to tell me example 1 guy “took a risk” and deserves it, well I’m afraid I disagree. He’s leeching.
Look up “Dominic Frisbee a simple guide to land value tax”.
The idea that someone can for example own part of Manhattan in perpetuity and just pass it on, with each generation living like kings off the backs of regular workers, in perpetuity, is just so “anti American” to me. I’ve no idea why people defend “property rights” in such a silly way as I see on this board and elsewhere. Taxing the unimproved value of land is way more “free market” than what I see happening in the USA right now.
Plus LVT would take over labour taxes, which are also totally non-liberal. Americans just make zero sense on any of these topics, in my opinion.
Sorry I realized I didn’t answer your question directly, but I had to put that context…
so the person would own the land and the property on it , as now, you just would get the part of the value uplift that society creates taxed away from you. You own the building, value you add, you keep.
I dunno, g…
Both of your examples sound like Las Vegas to me…
I believe Texas has the most land tax in the USA, not sure about Vegas, could be. It’s a continuum obviously, where you can go for 100% LVT and have the unimproved value of land at near zero, or do it a bit less hard and use income tax more to fill the gap.
My understanding is Texas has lower taxes due to relatively high property taxes. I believe they do not do the “unimproved” value. So if you create more value you get taxed more, which again is the antithesis of what Americans claim they stand for. But Texas is having some success because they are suppressing rentier activity, even if nobody understands that.
@Georgist: There is no state in the USA that doesn’t levy a property tax of some kind. Most will also tax income and profits and gain-in-value on capital (including land sold).
So:
Example 1: Speculative seller pays substantial fraction of profits (if above a minimum) as capital gain tax. Future owner pays ongoing property taxes of typically 1-3% of assessed value, which includes both the land and any improvements. Speculative seller most likely previously paid property taxes to help fund the “society improvements” which increased the land value as well. (You have a legitimate point that the system doesn’t work perfectly and some people extract more in profit than they should, from playing the “development” game where they socialize the cost of the improvements and privatize the profits. But you overstated your case.)
Re: Example 2:
The Manhattan property owner you refer to currently pays 3% of assessed value in taxes every year. One could argue the government is actually the rentier here and the “owner” is more of an agent who runs the show in exchange for a share.
In both cases, “Society” is getting a cut. Is it always the right amount? No. But is anything government-run ever perfect?
P.S. I would add that one of the strongest arguments for a gold-standard (or other limited-money standard, or even simply a balanced-budget rule) is that government spending gets much better scrutiny and prioritization when it is strictly limited by available money and credit. Tax loopholes get closed, policies get drafted with greater care, and so on.
> In both cases, “Society” is getting a cut. Is it always the right amount? No.
That’s the rub. I mean you could say this about anything and miss the mark by a mile.
> in both cases the public have a say, are they getting the right amount under Chairman Mao? No, but is anything ever perfect?
> in both cases workers get paid, are the prisoners fire fighting for $2 an hour getting a fair risk premium? No but….
Clearly the outcome is effected by the balance, in a huge way.
This really illustrates the total unwillingness of Americans to engage in the “grey area” between two huge binary extremes. It’s just going to take more work than asking if someone is a commie or not, to get results.
AA,
g does not seem to understand that, at least in USA, every single SF of ”land” is taxed; true that the ”land” taxes can be very very different in different places, even places within the same state or even municipalities…
Been there and done that and seen ”green belt” taxes on land a lot lower than non green belted lands contiguous, not to mention miles away…
And to be sure, even the Amish pay their land taxes to the local jurisdictions, at least in the county with 3000+ Amish a friend lives in.
Surely, within ( and with out ) all the various and sundry differentiation of costs of land, and taxes thereon,,, WE the Peons can ”pay our money and take our chances” according to our ”lights.”
OR, as many of you young boomers are now apparently doing, WE can just live in our RV without any ownership — ( in reality only renting from the local GUV MINT,, ) , of any land or the taxes, fees, etc., etc. that each and every locale MANDATES.
Always been that way for each and every PEON,,, and, from what I can get by reading tons of so called HIStory, ofdecades,, and lot of HERstory now becoming available,,, NOW is actually quite a bit better than the last 1000 years or so,,, on average…
SCOTUS ruling doesn’t apply in California. Gavin Newsom has billions more taxpayer dollars to hand out. Young people that work are the suckers. Half of their income taken in taxes. Don’t bother paying rent, meanwhile worker shortages everywhere. Now Newsom gives every deadbeat legal or illegal another $600 of our money.
“…the eviction ban was legally iffy but the litigation would give the government time to distribute $47 billion to make landlords whole and get tenants off the hook.”
You see how the goal posts were moved after the kick was in the air? Shady A F. The whole premise of this “program” was to prevent the spread of disease as these poor renters would be forced to double and triple up with other people, putting the community at risk. Remember that? Then it morphed into “oh, these poor renters who are going to get kicked out!” Bunch of BS.
In other news, the TBP index has slightly turned negative for the first time in almost eighteen months.
First trademarked by WR at WS, the index is a general measure of the rate of insanity associated with government action in a rational economy. A positive trending is typically associated with increasingly obtuse language (laced with words such as transitory, or unprecedented ) used by appointed and elected officials such as the current members of the J team to justify unsane policies.
The concept of the TBP index has become increasingly popular among a small segment of the fringe population that are believe to frequent non traditional media sites for economic data that is typically compiled by various government agencies but examined by no one in charge.
However, experts predict that the negative shift in the TBP index is transitory and is anticipating a resumption of a positive trajectory later on today when Fed reserve chairman Jerome Powell makes his remarks at Jackson Hole. Unless a member of the administration or the legislative branch get in front of the camera first.
UNSANE
🤪
I am guessing we should just invest in stocks and housing and enjoy the melt up of all this stimulus handouts?
Just think of the bottom 50% of the population who do not own any stocks or barely put any money into a 401k. They are missing out. The if they are renters….they are really missing out on the money printing.
Honestly, it’s not just 50%. The fact that 50% owns stocks is used an excuse to continue printing, but most of that 50% has something like $80k in a 401K. So if that $80k goes to $100k, they’re worse off because of the inflation that has occurred.
Most of the benefits of printing go to the top 3% or so.
Stocks and housing are both overvalued precisely because of continuous money digitizing and the expectation that it will continue. The melt up has already taken place. It can continue.
To buy stocks and housing is a speculation on future money creation. It is not so much assets getting more valuable as it your saved dollars steadily losing value.
Debt and money creation has allowed all this.
LOL…just saw this in an article. Spending decreased in july. if you read between the lines….it is mostly because of shortages. It there were more cars and furniture to buy, spending would probably be up I am guessing.
————————————————————
Goods spending fell 1.1% last month, led by motor vehicles. A global shortage of semiconductors is hampering auto production. There were also decreases in spending on recreational goods as well as clothing and footwear.
What does the SC do? Oversee that Congress doesn’t write unconstitutional laws? The eviction moratorium was over the top in the first place, like mandating individual health insurance payments to private companies. That wasn’t a tax really, was it? A public tax paid to private corporations. See the ruling on Eminent Domain, signed by conservative and liberal justices, dissented by the moderates. A moratorium is not forgiveness, though perhaps this will begin the debt jubilee. Whoever owes the most, wins.
And hopefully now the deadbeat renters will get their comeuppance and join the ranks of the homeless. I hope too, that if the Feds actually make good on the back rent for these squatters, that they pursue them for debt forgiveness taxes.
Wow. For the cost of 2/3 of an F-35 all the rent will be paid We can solve the homeless problem for peanuts.
100,000 Afghan refugees arriving in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. I hope some of them are skilled in building trades.
You give them a bunch of peanuts and they might make many more children needing more govt. handouts until there are many children and not enough peanuts.
Actually, David, there is precedent for this you may not know about or recall…
Specifically, the large tent cities erected for the Vietnamese influx in the early 70s… Elgin AFB, for one…
Turns out there were quite a few really good shrimpers in the bunch who migrated to the northern gulf coast, much to ire of the local fishermen…
Basically, it was the 2nd Viet Nam war…
Interesting reading if you can find it…
Fast forward, now you have 2nd and 3rd generations of these people who pull their own weight…
I realize times are different, but the old “ the more things change, the more they stay the same “ comes to mind…
My only point is that if the only choice is immigrate ( even if I don’t want to ) or get shot, well, in that case, Hello America…
Only time will tell…
PS, my cousin is a shrimper ( ocean boats)… with her I don’t mix wine and Vietnamese unless I want to get bruised…
COWG-that is a VERY interesting take on American ‘responsibility’ for its foreign ventures and its street (sea?)-level view of business ‘competition’.
Blowing some more of the thick dust off of my past:
Back in the ’90’s, the local moto-roadracing club approached the shop i was working at to provide ‘parts in the paddock’ at each of their meetings at two tracks in NorCal, one averaging an hour away, the other averaging about four hours. The incentive for us to load/haul/unload/setup/breakdown/load/haul/unload a 28ft trailer version of our racing-oriented store to these venues was a reasonable flat fee we paid to the club in exchange for an exclusive club track vendor rights (again, this was the club’s offer). As we were strong supporters of the moto-racing scene (danger, Will Robinson! Too much ‘enthusiasm’ in any enthusiast-oriented business can obscure the fact that you are ‘in business’, first-regular SWOT analyses must be your constant companion…). We accepted the subsequent but sustainable modest return in terms of improving and expanding our business and reputation at our physical store. This worked well going into the aughts-when the local roadracing grids were expanding, but also resulted in a lot of racers selling their individual merchandise side hustles at the track on race weekends. Despite our complaints, the situation reached a point that we were not profitable or even breaking even.
We had a sit-down with the club president (a good man who had brought us in) and let him know that we weren’t opposed to competition, even though we believed it violated our handshake, but that there might be some or all
weekends we would decline to attend unless those selling were on a level playing field, to wit-
a) had to pay the same vendor fee to the club that we did (none were)
b) be open and available 0700-1800 each race day , as we were. (none were).
and
c) had to provide all necessary business, tax, and insurance documentation and coverage that we were required to provide the track proper (not the club) as a vendor. (again, none did).
The situation was rectified in our favor by the next meeting, my understanding was that the ‘racers’ realized the necessity of meeting the same requirements as our firm would virtually eliminate any profitability and add a not-inconsiderable paperwork burden (…the lack of understanding of overhead costs, sales tax and liability requirements among so many never fails to make me shake my head…).
Illustrating again the myriad difficulties in well-implementing Smith’s ‘well-regulated’ markets…
may we all find a better day.
I also remember a Bosnia refugee that was placed in Salt Lake City as a teenager. He grew up to go on a killing spree at a local SLC mall. Importing other people’s problems.
Most of the nail salons in the U.S. are owned and run by Vietnamese refugees as well.
Oops! Meant to put that most nail salons are owned and operated by KOREAN War refugees.
Are you Native American?
Those refugees will get money for everything they need. I have seen this before in Florida and know of many who were settled in flyover country too. All while our people are living in tents under the highways. Liberals in action.
DR DOOM,
I think you’re talking about the entire program costs of the F-35. A single F-35A, the Air Force’s version, costs $78 million.
You can’t even buy a condo anymore for that in Manhattan :-]
No no. Think bigger ….You’d have to include an assortment of nukes.. plus a fully loaded peck of F-15$, to realize some kind of positive outcome …
Think like a dementa joe.
Geezzus, once again everybody has missed the real story here. Sure, everything’s a screwed-up mess…FUBAR! But both sides are being played against each other to obscure what we all should see. As an individual and legimate citizen, I have a right to go to the Supreme Court if needed. Likewise, a lone landlord has a right to take a single tenant under a contract to this body in a dispute, which may yield a general ruling that effects all other rentors and rentees. But who the hell gave the Alabama Association of Realtors standing in this case? Why should realtors have any say in the finances of property owners or the owner’s clients? Seems to me these guys have just crossed the bounds beyond establishing standards for an industry and are now acting as a price fixing scheme which makes them nothing less than “a combination in restraint of trade”. I say bust ’em up and prosecute to the full extent. And if they are helping to sink this country’s economy against the interest of the “public welfare”, a charge of treason with the consequent capital punishment should be instituted with a trial that meets the requirements of “speedy”. But then again, as Pink said in concert, “If I had my way, I’d have all of you shot!”.
Please correct me if I’m wrong…. But didn’t scotus only issue an “ opinion “ of the action taken by the CDC ? And that further action required Congress ?
I would take that to mean , barring Congress, then the scotus would lend favorably to actual legal action …
Somebody help me out here…
The government provides free education to 12th grade. The government should require that all voters be literate and able to pass a current events examination, a world geography examination (like finding Afghanistan on an unmarked map) and a basic math and tax examination. And to vote one must be an income taxpayer who pays more to the government than they get back. (80 percent of Americans get more back in benefits than they pay in and so people that pay no taxes like Bezos don’t get to vote.) And to hold office everyone needs to pass the testing with a score over the 50th percentile. Combine that with campaign finance reform, no campaign ads federally financed, one hour to present oneself on TV and media and the US might have a future. Right now it looks pretty bleak. I read somewhere that the entire group of Chinese leaders all have degrees in STEM. We might do well to see if we can outsource our politicians and lawyers as well to China. We outsource everything else.
Here, I’ll fix that first line for you…The government provides 12 years of forced indoctrination by choosing what you should be taught and restricting teachers from challenging students to consider any opinion that has not been sanctioned by the current wave of self-appointed elitists.
As a part time adjunct teacher at two high schools in middle coast CA in the middle 1980s, I agree with your summary, bs:
But, as Abe Lincoln said, ” You can fool some of the people all of the time, all of the people some of the time, but ya can’t fool all of the people all of the time. ”
And so it was with my students, all of whom were required to be at least 16 years of age ( and my classes were open to adults out of school desiring new career, etc.,,, but many of whom could not do basic arithmetic,,, and many of whom had no, absolutely no idea of what it cost to live in that area, etc., etc…
VVVN-any thoughts on parental involvement driving the ‘push-thru’ of lagging students and the conundrum of a school ‘looking bad’ and losing funding if it failed too many students during your teaching time? (We won’t even go into the long tail of ‘grade inflation’, or maybe we will, here…).
may we all find a better day.
One of the HSs was a full service type w 2800 kids, the other was the ”continuation” type with about 300.
Kids could elect the small one to get a ton more personal attention in much smaller classes – except for mine that was always full at both schools.
The intent was to give every kid the opportunity to work at their own pace, and all that implies, and it seemed to work 35 years ago.
60 years ago, tons of kids dropped out the day they turned 16,,, many of them in the 7th and 8th grades because there was no social advancement at all where I was in schools at that time in the SWFL area. Many of those kids went to work full time on their family farms and groves and ranches, ( instead of after school, every weekend, all summer, etc. ) ,,, and are very well off today.
In the northwest we have eliminated the tests that show that high school graduates can do anything. An the current high school class is graduating even though many never attended any high school classes in their senior year. If they did not graduate them the system would back up. We are in a world where no one has to ever show anything. And to vote in the northwest you just have to have a driver’s license which is virtually given to anyone. This way no one is inconvenienced.
Big corporations are upset as fewer Mom and Pop and retired landlords will be going broke with no income and will have to sell out cheap.
Big corporations had a nice run looting the treasury and they certainly got a good return on their investment in the Democratic Party.
I suggest a new space saving shorthand symbol, or letter be created for use in financial media and general reporting: A combination of a T and an R, kind of like a Cyrillic letter, to represent “TRillions” and to tack onto discussions of budgets and to append after a growing number of the elite’s names.
The only mention I can find of Quadrillions is in relation to derivatives. Some day there will be a Quadrillionaire.
CDC F***d up so Politicians could dodge blame.
Politicians fixed FUBAR with $$ – making Landlords AND freeloading renters hpower.
Capitalists watch Politicians in action and ID new guaranteed subsidized profit center (rentals)
Renters win (free rent)
Landlords win (state sponsored indemnity)
Capitalists win (Rental real estate is now a guaranteed profit center)
Most importantly…..
Politicians win, retain power.
UBI was tested and determined to be good.
typo….”hpower” should be “happy ” ;-)
Hold on to your britches, all you boomers, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!! If Congress passes the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill followed by the $3.5 trillion dollar reconciliation, we will be awash in money, especially the welfare queens. It will make the Afghanistan war look like…about half.
“Money for nothing, and the chicks for free!” The resentment will go off the Richter scale.
Watch that ”chick” stuff gg:
Might be able to get home free with ”birds” as not many of the young and contentious will ”get it” as they might with baby birds…LOL
Dire Straights, kids, look it up. VVN, your reply was perfect..!! LOL
Yes, that is a factor. But that money will be spread out over years. And the infrastructure bill isn’t even all new money. I think only about half of it is.
Kick-the-Can and ‘spread out over years’ are close relatives!
I should have learned to play the guitar, I should a learned to play them drums….
You forgot to point out that the unemployment benefits are tax free. Most people on unemployment were taking home more than before, and this is particularly true if one of the spouses was in a high paying job so that the marginal tax savings was even greater. This is an example of trying to do good things which then have unintended consequences. Help wanted signs are everywhere.
Unemployment is taxable,SS tax is withheld also.
Wolf you made it onto the Steven Van Metre youtube channel tonight.
You’ve made it.
Georgist –
You just referenced Steven Van Metre on Wolf’s site, putting Steven Van Metre in a bigger league.
Some of the people on unemployment never received any money. A friend of mine in Nevada county Ca has never received one red cent from unemployment, despite her place of employment shutting down, filling out days of paperwork and spending days on phone calls to the local unemployment office. They managed to pay their rent but have had a hard time of it. They missed their electrical payments for while, but caught up when the last Ca stimulus came around.
I’ve also seen comments on this board of landlords not receiving government money that was promised.
Where did it all go?
BTW, if anyone has an idea who my friend can call for advocacy for please let me know. She’s about given up. I suspect fraud on the county’s unemployment office’s part.
Cool story bro.
Nicely callous there. Why do you think it is not true?