Surge Reported in Crowdfunding Campaigns for Rent, Food, and Bills (seattletimes.com) 170
The Washington Post reports on a surge in crowdfunding campaigns for basic essentials like rent, food and bills:
Sites like GoFundMe, Kickstarter or even Facebook allow people and businesses to establish a cause — or set up a page laying out why they (or someone they are raising the money for) need money, and what the cash will go toward. After demand spiked last year, GoFundMe in October formalized a new category specifically for rent, food and bills. More than $100 million had been raised at that time year-to-date for basic living expenses in tens of thousands of campaigns during 2020 — a 150 percent increase over 2019. Both Vancouver-based FundRazr and U.K. crowdfunding website GoGetFunding report similar, though smaller, trends for last year, as well as honeymoon sites PlumFund and HoneyFund.
But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses... Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. "I saw a whole bunch of zeros," he said...
GoFundMe hasn't seen a slow-down on activity related to basic expense campaigns. It "continues at an elevated rate," company spokesperson Bobby Whithorne said... The monthly bills category is now one of GoFundMe's largest and has made up 13 percent of all new fundraisers since it was added in October, the company said. The campaigns range from people who have lost their jobs or been evicted to those who have suffered a health emergency and need help paying rent, and more. Meanwhile fundraisers for food in January spiked 45 percent higher than a year before, the company said. On Facebook, people raised $175 million for coronavirus-related fundraisers on the flagship site and Instagram between early March to late December last year, said Elizabeth Davis, a product manager on Facebook's charitable giving team.
GoFundMe makes money from many of these new campaigns it hosts and fosters — the company charges credit card processing fees, but primarily makes money from "tips" left on each donation. The tip level is automatically set at 12.5 percent of a donation, though donors can change the amount or decline to tip the company...
Despite the surge in crowdfunding, it doesn't replace other societal safety nets, experts said. GoFundMe's chief executive Tim Cadogan published an op-ed in USA Today in February, calling for more robust government programs to help people and insisting to Congress that GoFundMe "can't do your job for you."
The article also cites one research team's preliminary finding that more than 40% of coronavirus-related fundraisers on GoFundMe never received a single donation.
But a year into the pandemic, some individual crowdfunding campaigns are reporting little success raising donations to cover basic expenses... Daryl Hatton, CEO and founder of FundRazr said when he browsed through the campaigns for basic expenses, most were getting little or no donations. "I saw a whole bunch of zeros," he said...
GoFundMe hasn't seen a slow-down on activity related to basic expense campaigns. It "continues at an elevated rate," company spokesperson Bobby Whithorne said... The monthly bills category is now one of GoFundMe's largest and has made up 13 percent of all new fundraisers since it was added in October, the company said. The campaigns range from people who have lost their jobs or been evicted to those who have suffered a health emergency and need help paying rent, and more. Meanwhile fundraisers for food in January spiked 45 percent higher than a year before, the company said. On Facebook, people raised $175 million for coronavirus-related fundraisers on the flagship site and Instagram between early March to late December last year, said Elizabeth Davis, a product manager on Facebook's charitable giving team.
GoFundMe makes money from many of these new campaigns it hosts and fosters — the company charges credit card processing fees, but primarily makes money from "tips" left on each donation. The tip level is automatically set at 12.5 percent of a donation, though donors can change the amount or decline to tip the company...
Despite the surge in crowdfunding, it doesn't replace other societal safety nets, experts said. GoFundMe's chief executive Tim Cadogan published an op-ed in USA Today in February, calling for more robust government programs to help people and insisting to Congress that GoFundMe "can't do your job for you."
The article also cites one research team's preliminary finding that more than 40% of coronavirus-related fundraisers on GoFundMe never received a single donation.
Charities. (Score:2)
Somewhere in there should be charities.
Re:Charities. (Score:5, Insightful)
No, not charities. Welfare should not be privatised or left up to the whims and prejudices of private individuals. There should be an effective welfare state that provides housing, clothing, basic food, and medical needs to all, funded by taxes. Nobody should have to beg just to survive.
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Why should anyone work to pay those taxes with such an "effective" welfare state?
Re:Charities. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Please elaborate. How will you ensure that people get enough UBI for minimal rent and food and transportation to look for jobs, but not enough for whatever else you are worried about? Will UBI cover the cost of living in an expensive city rather than a cheap one? If so, why? If not, will it cover the costs of moving?
In a big city, how much does rent cost per month compared to luxuries like a nice new cell phone video game console, or the like? What food budget would you allow?
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By setting the $ amount to where it covers minimal rent/etc. I'm actually fine if it covers a whole mortgage payment on a shitty one bed-one bath in an otherwise depopulating rural area too..
Nope! That's a perk. I'd like it to be combined with some for of rent co
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The cost of moving matters because if UBI only covers the cost of living outside of big cities, people without jobs -- who seldom have safety cushions in their savings accounts -- will not be able to afford to move their stuff from the big city to the cheaper places to live. They will need to sell their used stuff in the city, and then buy replacement stuff where UBI covers the cost of living. That probably means less and/or worse stuff than they had before, in a place where they have fewer (if any) socia
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I'm so confused by your use case. People are currently living in those big cities. They can afford it! If they get UBI then they all of a sudden have to move? Because they want to quit their jobs? If they keep their jobs then they could continue living in the city.
I imagine that the mortgage you could get your 20% from the small towns that already will give you the 20% of the price of a house if you move there. Not counterfactual what-ifs, but already existing if you move to small towns in the US.
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You're implicitly arguing that no-UBI is a supportable, sustainable case. UBI advocates usually argue that we need it because of both past job losses -- in many cases, tying this to large homeless populations -- and because of future job losses as the economy changes more. They disagree that the current situation is either stable or sustainable. A UBI also reduces workforce participation, including in big cities.
Which small towns will already give you 20% of the price of a house simply for moving there?
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The people who are homeless and need UBI to survive don't have moving costs. Either people are surviving in the city, and will do so better with UBI, or they aren't, and can move with a bus ticket and a bag.
Similarly, to your workforce participation dropping out claim, people either can survive in a big city without a job or they cannot. It seems a strange argument to say that they don't need a job so they won't take one and then they cannot afford to be in a city so they'll starve. It seems they'll keep
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I can't speak to what places you were thinking of, but the ones I can find do not come close to covering 20% of a home. Several of them [housebeautiful.com] require you to have full-time remote employment [wrcbtv.com], or be self-employed already; or they only provide ~5% of a home's value (e.g. $5000 for homes worth $100k or more, $10k for homes worth $180k or more).
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Look, I don't want to do a ton of reserach. Most offer a flat $, not a percentage. This place [zillow.com] is in an area with a $10,000 cash payment for moving there, plus an additional $2,000 if you stay at least a year. Sure, at $70,000 asking, that's not enough - for a single person. But it's also a 2 bed/2 bath, so with two people moving in that's more than enough to put 20% down ($14,000) leaving enough for closing, furnishing, etc.
They require self/remote employment to ensure you're bringing money into the st
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Hahahaha. Oh, wait. You're serious. Let me laugh even harder. HAHAHAHAHAHA.
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A median one by what definition? How many roommates will the UBI assume? Can you quantify how much UBI should pay if it were implemented today?
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"Median" means a point where there are as many samples on one side as the other along a particular dimension. Which dimension you choose matters a lot for this kind of thing.
For example, is it median city when cities are sorted by population? (Why exclude towns and unincorporated areas?) The median city will be quite small -- for example, my home state has something like 38 cities [wikipedia.org], and the median on that axis is around 24,000 people, between Staunton and Fredericksburg. Even there, you get almost a 25%
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Yeah after all, nobody works in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, or any of the other countries where they have an effective welfare state... *eyeroll*
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Socialism is an attempt to answer that age old question: Am I my brother's keeper? It answers it by placing the responsibility of the welfare of the individual in the hands of the State. In some societies, this support is broad and covers people (quote literally) from cradle to grave. In others, the intrusion is minimal and lets people rise or fall based on the whims of chance.
Even in the minimalist societies, there is still a modicum of socialism where the powers of the state are used to enforce laws and
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Charities will help people they consider "deserving", which means racism, misogyny and other forms of discrimination.
Society should not rely on charity for its internal needs.
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Ah yes, those racist and misogynistic charities we've all suffered with throughout history. Only government can provide.
Do you folks even listen to how silly you sound?
Re:Charities. (Score:5, Interesting)
Only government can provide
See I think this is looking at it the wrong way. While I agree, I don't think it's a government "provides". I do think it is a government "prevents". The amount of wealth in any nation isn't some infinite value. There is some finite value of wealth in any country and I believe it's the government's job to prevent any one person or group of people crossing the economic Schwarzschild radius and becoming a wealth black hole.
Now yes, absolutely there is a debate there as to how we best do that. But I feel there is a basic duty of government's to allow "free market" and prevent "unchecked monopolistic capitalism".
Additionally, the person whom you were replying to didn't even mention "government provisions". They indicated:
Society should not rely on charity for its internal needs.
And leaves open to debate as to where to go from there. But it is you that is indicating.
Do you folks even listen to how silly you sound?
Now I point that out, because I just want to remind everyone, it is you bringing up the "government provides" here. Not saying right/wrong/whatever, just pointing out that you shouldn't be "do you folks" anyone for something you've interjected.
All that said, the Salvation Army continues to support legislation allowing employers to deny employment based on sexual preference. And that's like not even getting into skeletons in closets, that's just one of those ones that everyone just already knows about, sort of how you don't have to guess where Chick-fil-a or Hobby Lobby stand on the matter either (but neither are charities, I get that, it's mostly pointing out American companies aren't exactly shy about putting out their discriminatory views for public display). I mean the person you are replying to does indeed have a point. Charities haven't been the most inclusive group historically speaking. It's gotten a bit better as of late, but there's still very much discrimination that abounds in a lot of the groups, especially the religiously backed ones. And I would hazard a guess that if things like EEoE and other laws like that didn't exist, there would be a bit more rampant discrimination going on.
Which I mean someone could get into "religious freedom" and what not. And yeah, you're right, but that still makes the original person's point though. And yes, there are secular organizations out there. But not anywhere near the numbers of those with religious backgrounds. But point still stands in my opinion that grandparent's comment is valid. Historically speaking charities have been selective about who is "deserving" of their funds and some of that selection bias is based upon things that consider people's religious background, their sexual orientation, and sexual preference. And that is, as much as people would like to toss up "religious freedom" as a shield, discrimination. That being defined as the act of making unjustified or unrelated to the subject, distinctions between human beings based on the groups, classes, or other categories to which they do or are perceived to belong to, and such distinctions resulting in treatment disproportional between the groups, classes, or other categories.
Limit wealth (Score:2)
Just chop the top 1% off the bell curve and there will be a fairer playing
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I have one solution to this problem that would probably work. Limit personal wealth and benefits.
I would tend to agree. My biggest hesitation about this is proper implementation. Now granted this is a bit of a reach, so agreed "not a perfect proxy", but I feel if one was curious about what a wealth(-like) tax would look like in America, they could look at how the estate tax is currently done. And as it stands, the estate tax system is fraught with delays, to say it in the best light. Most estate tax bills do not get paid until five or six years after they've been handed out because of the various t
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There is some finite value of wealth in any country
Oh oh. Somebody failed Econ 101. 'Wealth' isn't like Scrooge McDuck's bank vault full of gold that he hoards and sits and counts. It's a proxy for the productivity if the nation. While it isn't infinite, it can be increased. Or decreased. What the government does primarily* is to move it around.
*Some stuff they do does increase wealth. Like funding practical infrastructure construction and maintenance programs. Want a piece of that new wealth? Grab a shovel.
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'Wealth' isn't like Scrooge McDuck's bank vault full of gold that he hoards and sits and counts.
I didn't indicate that. I indicated there is a finite amount of it to which.
While it isn't infinite
You seem to agree with me on the point. Additionally you expanded:
it can be increased. Or decreased.
To which I didn't say it was immutable.
Somebody failed Econ 101.
This thread has been a lot of putting words people didn't say into their mouths in attempts to discredit the previous comment. But it's not really discrediting anyone if you invent something, someone said and then debate that.
Want a piece of that new wealth? Grab a shovel.
Why is it that ultra capitalism apologist instantly shift into blame mode? Or at best just indicate t
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There seems to be some sort of ethical carve-out for "positive discrimination" intended as a remedy for past institutional marginalization of an ethnic group.
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Anything done with race as a factor is inherently racist. Apparently it is okay to have racist policies as long as they affect the right races in the way they hope it will pan out, they being the politicians.
If you are waiting around for the government to make your life better, you may want to try a different approach as you may be waiting a while.
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The unfortunate reality is, there aren't nearly enough charities and donors to make this work on a large scale. Moreover, charities tend to focus on specific groups, e.g. children, families, women, certain races or ethnicities and so on, which means many who don't fit one of these will slip through the cracks.
Of course, GoFundMe is better than nothing. If 40% got nothing, then 60% did get something, which is probably the more important number anyways, since there's no indication of the quality of those 40%
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Huh. And here I thought those Christian megachurches whose leaders get millions each year, who fly on private jets, are driven around in limos, were too broke to help the poor as it's supposedly said in the Bible.
Humme's Is/Ought problem (Score:3)
Somewhere in there should be charities.
They should. But they aren't. They won't. Hell, I'd say these GoFundMe accounts are charities run by individuals
That's why government institutions and systems were put in place (and still exist in pretty much all rich, first world countries, except ours.)
The fact that 40% of covid-related campaigns received 0 shits, it shows the effectiveness of charitable work. In modern, post-Dickensian societies, charities are meant to supplement social contracts, not to replace them. They are supposed to be the cau
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There are. Here is one https://secure.actblue.com/ [actblue.com]. Why don't you chase down that money you donated to Antifa and see where it went.
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ROTFLMAO!
Several *years* ago - under IQ 45 - the charities were screaming that they were overwhelmed, and couldn't handle all the help that was needed.
The *ONLY* organization that can handle this big a need is... government.
Time to tax 90% of the wealth of the billionaires and triple to taxes on billion and trillion dollar companies, and instititute a national UBI, and I don't mean the $776/mo or $`1k/mo that welfare dribbles out.
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How would UBI affect inflation?
I am admittedly intrigued at how UBI could obviate all manner of welfare, Social Security, and unemployment benefits, but I worry about the inflationary aspects, especially in terms of the lower end of housing, mostly rental, where increases have on average already outstripped inflation for a long time.
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We can handle inflation other ways. I mean, why not put maximum rents on existing apartments? Rent control could work. Honestly, if you're worried about low-end housing, you want to eliminate AirBnBs
Re: Charities. (Score:2)
If your inflated value is being evenly distributed, the overall long term effect of inflation should approach zero. The value that is being "stolen" in inflation is coming back into your wallet in basic assistance.
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Minimum wage mostly involves money circulating within the economy. I buy a burger, some of that money goes to pay the person making it, that person buys goods from a store, that store buys services from my employer, my employer pays me, I get hungry and buy a burger. I'm all for a $15 minimum wage and then scaling it after that, but it's not the same thing.
UBI is constant injection of fresh money into the economy. This is traditionally seen as an inflationary move. Sometimes it's good, like in a recession,
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Ever played Monopoly? The game has UBI...
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Ever hear the phrase, life ain't fair? Never is, never will be. That's why we make games with rules that are fair, but try not to confuse games with life. Life will never be fair.
Re:Charities. (Score:5, Insightful)
Government is us... It's not separate.
We need to provide the money. That includes the pseudo people called corporations... And they aren't.
It needs to stop, then maybe UBI would be possible.
And maybe it wouldn't be necessary
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We need to provide the money.
Yes.
That includes the pseudo people called corporations... And they aren't.
Corporate taxes are just taxes on the middle and lower classes, but hidden so as to make the voters think they're not paying the bill.
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Most people don't want massive immigration, Yet there it is.
Most people don't want dudes in the girl's locker room. Yet, there it is.
[citation needed]
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>Yeah, supposedly.
>Most people don't want massive immigration, Yet there it is.
>Most people don't want dudes in the girl's locker room. Yet, there it is.
>Sure feels like government is separate, a lot of the time.
Look back at school... There were a handful who ran roughshod over the rest of us... It's the same thing.
If you think immigration is a bad thing... How far from where you were born do you now live migrant?
I was born in Northern California.
I can't swing my arms without running int
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You're right, people don't want immigration. So the Native Americans want YOU to go back to wherever in Europe you came from.
Oh, and show us a newspaper (Faux "News" and anything to the right of it doesn't count) of a trans woman attacking someone in a bathroom.
I can find accounts of girls being attacked by *BOYS*, not TRANS, who went into the girl's bathroom.
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You understand, there is an ability to want immigration, but not unrestricted, racist "if you're geographically close we'll let you in wink wink" immigration.
Why should some guy in Mexico get a chance while some other guy Ghana is screwed out of the opportunity?
Societies can absorb a level of immigration without it destabilizing what makes that society what it is. . With the current "don't become acclimatized to US culture, race is more important than anything, everyone's a fascist" arguments being made, th
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Maybe what needs to stop is irresponsibility... That means standing up and being accountable and visible.
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The social contract is fine. The people not upholding their end of it are the problem.
I agree with you, but only partially. I would argue that the social contracts aren't fine because they are insufficient. Consider our situation where health care is tied to full-time employment (unlike, say, Japan.) That's broken to me.
So that's part of the problem. The other part is where I agree with you, that for whatever remains of our social contracts, the people upholding their end aren't doing it.
But we need to recognize that our social contracts are insufficient. They were fine in post-WWII time
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A government work guarantee would be better I think.
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A humane society would make it so that most people are able to provide for themselves, and live a meaningful life without relying on the handouts of an lackluster bureaucracy.
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I know what my interests are. You do not. Bureaucrats interested in exercising their authority sure as hell don't.
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I mean, just to argue the point: When it comes to the ability to have basic necessities met, i.e. food, water, shelter, it's pretty easy to define "self interest". 99.9999% of respondents would likely choose to have food, shelter, and water. That's the INTENT of a UBI, to meet everybody's basic needs so that they can concentrate on bettering themselves and society. I'm not saying the government should be telling you what to eat or where to live, just that a basic amount of money is provided so that you
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You know better than bureaucrats what your interests are.
So, rent, food, and utilities are things they don't know about, but you do. And your objection to UBI is? That lets you have the money to pay all the above.
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The conditioning seems to have influenced you against your self-interests. UBI is taking money from one pocket in order to put it in another with some taken off the top to make sure it is distributed. The more you switch pockets the less you have.
The objective should be to create wealth. If everyone was treated equally there would be no reason to redistribute just assist those who have been handicapped. Physically, mentally and the few financially.
Not sure why some, like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, et
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The objective should be to create wealth.
You say that as if it were obvious. It isn't obvious to me. I think the objective should be to allow every person to live a happy, meaningful life. All my life I've been hearing people claim that if we just create enough wealth, everything will fix itself. Trickle down economics will redistribute it so everyone has plenty. It hasn't worked. Instead, almost all the newly created wealth has gone to a tiny number of people, and a large fraction of the population is worse off than they were 40 years ago.
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UBI is a misdirection for the problems of our society. As you have presented it, it will make no difference since the only distribution that will be done is that which is already done. The table scrapes will be further diluted and spread thinner. You haven't presented something greater. You are just presenting less individual choice. UBI doesn't fix the wealth "hoarding" that you seem to describe. We need to change our laws and our tax systems that stop the rich from exporting the wealth that our society so
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Please, stop with the straw man.
It's always monopoly guy smoking a cigar versus the poor schmuck who's working three jobs and getting minimum wage because, well, that's just life!
No, not really.
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It's hard to get a dang job when you graduate into a recession or when you get laid off because the government has issued an emergency order making it a crime for your employer (or your employer's client) to operate as a business.
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Good luck paying for rent, food, utilities, commuting, and student loan debt in many parts of the United States on $11 per hour Walmart wages.
I've noticed that (Score:3, Interesting)
Seems like people ask for crowdfunding as soon as a problem happens, "Surgery today to remove a hangnail...please help cover expenses, new living spaces, bed fittings, etc." Even sometimes from Canada where healthcare is covered.
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E-begging is a real fucking epidemic on Twitter. It always cracks me up seeing the usual types of blue checkmark twitter thinking they're signal boosting some poor unfortunate, but it's always the same rabble begging for money with the same nebulous "need".
I know most would say they don't care if the person is lying because either way they probably need the money, but the problem with that is that there are in real life _levels_ of how badly people need money. I guess it's from each according to his ability
Re: I've noticed that (Score:3)
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Seems like people ask for crowdfunding as soon as a problem happens, "Surgery today to remove a hangnail...please help cover expenses, new living spaces, bed fittings, etc." Even sometimes from Canada where healthcare is covered.
It "seems" like that... to you. And that's a function of *you* and not the problem in general.
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It "seems" like that... to you.
According to the article, it's not just me.
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Many people are living on the edge, one missed paycheque or one big bill away from disaster.
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It's the modern day panhandler, without the stigma of sitting on the corner. Obviously there are worthwhile causes. But there are also plenty that aren't. It's more about marketing and less about the need. Wasn't one set up for Lady Gaga's dog walker who got shot when the guy got shot working for one of the richest entertainers out there.
Taxes not government programs (Score:5, Interesting)
Government programs are generally not the answer to these sorts of basic affordability issues. We have done the experiment here in the UK. The government introduced a program called 'housing benefit' which almost anyone can get to help with housing costs. The problem is that the benefit amount was linked to a certain quartile of rents in the applicants area (this has now changed a little bit). What happened is that the benefit drove up rents in a vicious feed back loop until the entire rent curve flattened out. You now pay almost identical rent for a rubbish property as a decent one. Almost everyone turning up at a viewing has the same amount of money to pay for rent, regardless of their actual income, and people who simply should not have been able to afford to live in an area were able to stay and create a massive shortage.
Eventually the government froze the program by bringing in a benefit cap. At its height, where I was in London, an unemployed single mum with two children was getting £2500 per month of rental assistance. She had a far nicer maisonette than my wife and I could have afforded on two professional incomes at the time.
The middle class earners basically ended up with higher rents and higher taxes to pay for their neighbour's rents. It essentially destroyed the middle class in London, and many central areas are now inhabited by only the ultra rich and ultra poor (you'll find the few remaining middle class are those who bought ~10-20 years ago).
Of course the biggest beneficiaries of all of this were landlords. They now receive government welfare of over £20 billion a year.
The real solution was to tax landlord's windfall gains from rising prices (almost always in London this is due to something like a new train station being built, which landlords do not contribute towards yet capture the gains from), and using this to aggressively fund new public housing projects (or find a better way to incentivise private sector construction). This would have created a virtuous feedback loop, where as central areas became more expensive, it liberated money to build out more housing. Of course there would still be affordability problems in London (a lot of people want to live there) but at least something like this would not have been pouring petrol on the fire.
You see this same scam in almost everything - make credit available to students to 'help with education costs' and then education costs balloon as every young person now has access to the same amount of cash. UK also has a program for 'helping first home buyers' the result is that first home properties trade at 10% above market rate due to this 'help'.
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There's also rent control where the rent charged is tied to percentage of income.
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There's also rent control where the rent charged is tied to percentage of income.
That gives landlords a huge incentive to not rent to poor people.
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I don't know why people always like to micro-target taxation. It usually comes off as, and often is, punitive. It's pointless bureaucracy and micro-managing.
Instead of getting mad that those fat-cat (anyone successful is always a fat-cat, natch) landlords why not just tax all fat-cats? Keep it simple and raise taxes on everyone over a certain income. Easy peasy.
I'm nominally Republican though I hate most of those fuckers these days, but I don't have much of a problem with raising marginal capital gains and
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Targeting taxes is specifically done to discourage an activity. This is where cigarette taxes or CO2 taxes would come in. I'm fine with doing fines and subsidies instead of additional taxes, but the Supreme Court says that it has to be done through the tax code (at the federal level.)
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Ahh yes, the “fuck the landlords” approach yet again in action - never mind that during the same period successive governments did things like withdrawing rent paid direct to landlords and instead paid it to the tenant instead, seeing a huge uptick in unpaid rent, a backlog of evictions, and new legislation making it harder to evict?
Ive been renting out a house since 2018 now (through necessity as we are temporarily out of the country). We have to charge more than the mortgage because we get ch
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That doesn't compute. Paying off a mortgage is buying an asset from the bank. I don't know why you think that shouldn't cost money. I'm fine with you having to charge a rent below the mortgage value, either by market forces or rent control.
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Oh, *you’re* fine with us taking all the risk and reaping none of the rewards because tenants can cost us double in damages without any recompense, thats ok then! I shall assume the bent over stance then!
Go fuck yourself.
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What the GP is saying is that charging above mortgage is trying to get a house for free.
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You are paying down an asset you get to keep. Don't be a jackass.
And I say that as a landlord whose sole property brings in significantly less income than the mortgage.
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The value of that house/apartment you rent in London has more than doubled since 2018. I'm fine with you also not making money every month as well. And that's not "doubling your value in the house", because your mortgage is fixed. If you had 33% equity in your house before then, it more than quadrupled in value. And that's without tenants. Meanwhile, your tenants aren't covering your costs when they pay your mortgage - they are building up your ass
Re: Taxes not government programs (Score:2)
The landlords have lobbying groups shutting down all attempts to manufacture an appropriate level of housing stock. Then AirBnB comes in and exacerbates the issue by turning landlords into illegal hotels.
So yeah, fuck the landlords. They've been receiving government largesse for long enough. Time to start wiping out the weak hands who didn't plan for a market where the government is protecting your profits.
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Yeah, you get charged income tax on your profits - that is pretty much how everyone pays income taxes you know? Paying mortgage interest is a legitimate expense, paying off the mortgage principle is just buying part of the property back from the bank - not a business expense.
With that said, the real-estate lobby
Re:Taxes not government programs (Score:5, Interesting)
Landlords take risks. Sometimes this can pay off, as in your example of a train station that increases their gains, but sometimes it causes a loss. And that's how risks work. The "unearned" gain is part of a set of possibilties that averages out to a smaller gain or to nothing because it includes an equally unearned loss, and you're not proposing to compensate landlords for unearned losses.
If I were to flip a coin, and on heads you pay me $100 and on tails I pay you $110, it would be absurd to claim that, if you happen to get $110, theentire amount of $110 is unearned.
Re: Taxes not government programs (Score:2)
Really good example / analogy
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Housing benefit was never that easy to get, and a lot of landlords wouldn't accept it anyway. In fact it was only quite recently that a court ruled that "no DSS" (i.e. nobody on housing benefit) in ads for rentals is not allowed, and that does little to stop landlords simply rejecting people if they can find out somehow. It's often easy to tell from their references or credit check.
Anyway, a much better idea was social housing. Local government built homes, often very high quality ones, and rented them our
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In the UK there were successful public housing areas, often mixed in with private homes to help keep the areas from deteriorating. Of course there were big mistakes made in some places, particularly with tower blocks, but nothing insurmountable.
Re: Taxes not government programs (Score:2)
Salt Lake City.
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No issues with your post, only with the non sequitur at the end: "...You see this same scam in almost everything..."
It's not a scam, it's really fundamental economics.
If a government hands out free money, the price of everything goes up - that's called inflation.
If the government hands out assistance $ for things, quite naturally the people selling those things will raise their prices. This can only be surprising to people who have no grasp of economics or where the value of money comes from, whatsoever.
In
this does not scale (Score:4, Interesting)
The more people who face hardship the fewer people who have the flexibility to donate to charities or "crowdfund" things. Without infrastructure in place before a big economic downturn hits, the harder it will hit and the more disruptive it will be to our society. Any one in politics who is not bracing for a great depression is negligent, maybe even criminally so. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
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Crowdfunding and charity in general are not good ways to deal with these problems as some people are going to attract a lot more funding than others. People who just look good in photos, or who have a compelling story to tell, or who have the means to make a video, even just the means to set up a crowdfunding page (needs web access, skills and a bank account).
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unlike health insurance where everyone puts a lot of money into a pot then everyone takes some of it out at a constant rate, and a big fraction of them need to take a lot out but some of them are denied by insurance policies. Sometimes we apply insurance to the wrong purpose. Also I'm skeptical of private insurance in cases where the insurer appears to make huge profits but the premiums keep going up.
Government can't fix what it broke. (Score:2)
And I'm supposed to now want them to "step up" and fix the problem they created? Why should I want them to keep doing what they always have - "fix" a problem by giving themselves more money and power without actually fixing anything?
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Most bankruptcies in America involve people who had some kind of healthcare incidents in the past. Elizabeth Warren and her co-authors specifically asked their study subjects whether their bankruptcies were due to medical bills, and only 29% said yes. Warren et al. got to the "majority of bankruptcies are medical" by including a number of other factors, particularly (1) $5000 or 10% of annual income in out-of-pocket medical payments over the previous two years, (2) they mortgaged their house to pay medica
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I guess they already spend that free government stimulus money and just want the freebies to continue.
We could all be in the same situation in a few months. Most people I'm sure would prefer to work but when the economy takes a dip and the money runs out it's no fun. I sense a lack of sympathy in the world these days. It's sure to get worse before it gets better.
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Not everyone got a check, and if they did the amounts were different.
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Some people who saw high salary employment in 2020 got nothing in the second and/or third round because the initial calculations were based on tax filings. I believe they have to wait until filing their 2021 taxes to get the refundable credits.
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Yeah, $1400 goes a long way towards covering multiple months of someone's rent, food, and bills.
(Note to the dense: this is sarcasm)
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Unemployment payments got significant boosts during the pandemic as well. For example, the original bump (through last July) was an extra $600/week -- assuming 40 how of lost employment, that was $15/hour of extra unemployment benefits. Laster, that was dialed down to $300-400/week, "only" $7.5-10/hour of extra unemployment.
People who lost wages were, and still are, eligible for a lot more than just stimulus checks.