California decided to pay peoples' back rent recently. I'd guess the people that made sacrifices to keep paying rent instead of YOLOing it on call options are a bit miffed that they kept paying, but at least the California government is using some of its Fed pandemic money to pay the landlords that were forced to provide free housing.
Yeah, I wish the government would stop pumping up the moral hazard. Basically responsible action is punished and YOLOing is rewarded… until some unknown date when it suddenly isn’t.
Of the people who couldn't afford, how many do you think were YOLOing as opposed to just plain old screwed? Basically, why focus on fictional people that are living in a way you find morally dubious, instead of the very real people living below the poverty line and struggling to keep a roof over their head?
Anecdotally I've heard from plenty of people that they have strategies like putting minimum down on a house so they can walk away from it if the market crashes, as a lesson from 06-07. I suspect plenty of people learned lessons from the last crash about moral hazard and are doing whatever they can, for example not paying rent as long as possible just because they can, and then when the crash happens they'll buy a house or meanwhile it might be in Robinhood.
The poor aren't stupid. They can figure out schemes and strategies just as well as Wall Street, they just have less opportunity in most circumstances.
You're talking to people who can put a down payment on a house. I question if we're talking about the same groups of people. That wouldn't fit my own internal standard for 'poor', you know?
> how dare somebody be happy without working harder than I do
I'm all for people being happy and especially for people being more successful while working less, as long as the "less work" means higher effective productivity per hour, or a choice to be happy by some other means.
The problem is when policy transfers wealth from people who do work to people who don't. Then the person isn't happy because of their own choices or more effective or better chosen efforts, it's just a transfer of happiness from a responsible person to someone who may or may not be.
> The problem is when policy transfers wealth from people who do work to people who don't.
Why is it that this line is brought up when it might be a poor person getting a hand out but never when it is a rich person being given a hand out? You'd think the focus would be on stopping the ultra-wealthy from draining the rest of society with their out-sized influence, not weighing the hearts of the poor against a feather.
Oh I'm all for the rich not getting handouts either. I'm equally or more bothered by that.
Both have the effect of harming the professional, responsible, hard working, broader middle class.
And even hurting the professional, responsible, hard working, working poor. Because if you're working really hard for $10/hr and someone else is getting a handout, that means you have nothing extra to show for your efforts except exhaustion at the end of your day.
Its clear to me that you don't really have an idea about the scales involved here, one, because you seem ambivalent about which group bothers you more (hint, it should be the people causing the most harm, no this isn't the poor people on assistance), and two because you seem to think that the working poor are typically making as much as $10/hr. Got some real "how much does a banana cost" vibes here.
To be less acrimonious and more specific, when the people that Jimmy Johns employs require public assistance to make ends meet, who do you accuse of accepting hand outs? If it is the people in poverty I think you've gotten tricked into forgetting the people with the power to change things.
