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Comment by humanrebar | Hacker News Reader

And how do people who make incomes on collecting on obligations (landlords, pensioners, etc.) buy new things, like food and medicine?

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That's where you need much smaller bailouts and stimuli. Agriculture is less than 1% of the GDP. The currently-discussed bailout is big enough to feed all of America for years. And it's actually not a bad idea to nationalize food distribution -- supermarkets are where the virus spreads. Many countries have switched to safe deliveries of food.

And conversely, the current bailout, as proposed, doesn't come anywhere close to stopping mortgage defaults, layoffs, and the slew of other issues.

Now, this plan basically means you don't buy new things (cars, laptops) for 3 months, but I think that's okay. But yes, it only covers 95% of the problem. Companies might need help with, for example, restarting production lines, maintenance costs, supply chain delays, or other issues. All that is pocket change compared to what we're looking at spending right now.

But the commies have been telling us that for years and we didn't listen. Why would we listen now?

I'm joking, well put, thanks.

Maybe landlords will need to get a real job. I hear Amazon is hiring warehouse staff.

Joke aside, you’re spot on in that the economy can only bear a certain level of rent-seeking. That level is going down now, which might also be seen as a return to normal.

Pumping money in ETFs and real estate (aka passive income) can’t enrich everybody, productive output is required.

That joke isn't funny because it's at the expense of the tenants. A broke landlord will prioritize living in his own property instead of renting out.

Also, general hate of landlords only hurts tenants because there are actually quite a lot of very forgiving landlords. My mother owns property and when her tenant couldn't pay she offered the tenant the option to remodel the apartment (she paid for the materials) while the tenant was looking for a new job. Well, 3 months/missed payments later the tenant just disappeared and didn't do any remodeling at all. Needless to say, my mother won't make this mistake twice.

I've met some landlords that are willing to offer special discounts to families instead of just renting the 100m² apartment out to some single tech dude who is guaranteed to pay rent. (in rent controlled markets like Berlin the tech guy always wins)

And those were just the private landlords. Housing association here are municipal and they basically offer you 10+ year leases where you do everything yourself, including the floors and kitchen and in exchange the rents are very low.

Hating landlords and abusing goodwill just makes that goodwill disappear.

A broke landlord who lives in his or her own property is also known as a homeowner.

They get a bailout.

Unemployment/SNAP /etc.

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