What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[OttoVonBismarck]

And my point is if you're interested in a discussion you can make a point. If you're too lazy to Google I don't have time for you.

I can live with that.

I bet. I'll note your "questions" in your BS faux socratic-dialogue just seem to happily match the same "talking points" the Fox News crowd brings up, yet again.

[Admiral Yi]

I bet. I'll note your "questions" in your BS faux socratic-dialogue just seem to happily match the same "talking points" the Fox News crowd brings up, yet again.

Thanks for making the time.

[alfred russel]

Additionally: NBER found that about 75% of PPP funds went to the top 20% of households by income.

Completely unsurprising.

Like I said, this is pretty obviously a situation where the chattering classes (and the usual suspects on these forums) get really worked up over the horror of a lower income person getting money, but don't even care or investigate the facts on a massive, hundreds of billions of dollars handout to rich people.

In this case I was pointing out that the $4 trillion figure you put out as the amount of handouts to large and wealthy businesses under four specific programs was incorrect.

[Sheilbh]

With perfect hindsight would means testing have worked?  Honest question.

A high net worth owner can lay off staff due to covid-induced lack of business just as easily as a lower net worth individual can.

I just meant that as an example of a way of targeting. I'm not sure what that would be for the support to businesses that needed it/were actually at risk.

[alfred russel]

OvB, if you want to discuss the policy and get past your error above that you won't admit, it is an excruciatingly poor policy.

Even with a $125k limit for single people and $250k for married couples, this is $300 billion that is arguably not even progressive. It might still be, but college educated people are not generally the most needy in society. It seems more like this is just a way to give folks that tended to vote for you the equivalent of a $10k check in advance of the midterms.

College costs have grown at an absurd pace, but this doesn't fix or even identify the causes. It is bizarre: college costs today are higher than they have ever been, and arguably the value of a degree is less than ever, but it is the legacy students that are aided rather than those that are just entering college.

It also creates perverse incentives. A precedent has been set, and I'd recommend against anyone paying off their loans at this point, and suggest to people to take out loans rather than pay for college directly because who would say this is the last time it will happen.

I paid off my student loans a long time ago, so I guess I'm a sucker. My sister in law recently graduated med school and is going to be an ER doctor and apparently qualifies...I guess that is a great use of federal money.

[OttoVonBismarck]

The reality is the entire CARES act (of which PPP was ~450 some billion--a separate act later added more funding to PPP which is how it got to 900bn+), which passed in March of 2020 was likely a vast overreaction. There was a huge hit to equities and a huge wave of unemployment the first few months of COVID, and I do think at least a good chunk of this spending was necessary to shore that up.

I think there is a decent argument that the PPP as it was instituted in the CARES act, and the $268bn in tax rebates (these were the $1200/$2400 "checks" people got if their income was below a certain level) were simply unnecessary given the overall economic situation.

The eviction moratorium (and I say this as a landlord) was probably a good idea, although I would have liked to have seen a better program for making landlords whole (I'm lucky in that the units we rent out are in an area where most people are white collar professionals and we didn't have any tenants who quit paying rent.)

I think the CARES act funding to local hospitals, the $5000 tax credit to employers for retaining employees (which you weren't eligible for if you took PPP money), the $500bn "Main Street Stabilization Fund" were good ideas/programs.

In lieu of the PPP and individual rebates I would have rather seen sectoral bailouts/handouts. The reality is if you were a professional service business, any kind of business that does its work in offices, very few of those shutdown. My wife and I obviously didn't lose a single day of work over covid, and almost none of our friends did--our social circle is overwhelmingly in the white collar professional career field, or for my wife's friends the medical field.

Bars, restaurants, and tourist businesses were massively impacted by COVID and probably needed targeted relief. Law offices, financial firms, technology firms etc largely were not massively impacted (negatively) by covid--tech firms in general actually saw a covid wind fall, as did some financial concerns (the insurance industry for example saw a huge windfall from covid due to people staying home more massively decreasing insurance claims.)

[alfred russel]

I really can't remember my thoughts on the CARES Act at the time and i suspect it was something of an afterthought considering everything else going on then.

But, I don't think it is a fair reading of history to say it was designed as a giveaway to large and wealthy businesses. Congress is excrutiatingly slow, and with the control of congress split between the two parties, there was a totally ineffective president incapable of leadership, and with a perceived need for immediate action, the cares act is what we got.

Two years later smart people can point out there were better designs possible, but i'm not sure why that is an argument to justify just randomly giving $10k for student loan debt relief.

[Admiral Yi]

I just meant that as an example of a way of targeting. I'm not sure what that would be for the support to businesses that needed it/were actually at risk.

An ideal program would have targeted firms that were going to lay off workers because of lack of business.  But how do you forecast that ahead of time?  Just take the owner's word for it?  Maybe make the funds available ex post.  Then you'd have actual sales data (unless they lie).  But then the risk is a business goes under while waiting for money.

An idea I thought of would be to make the money available up front to everyone, but then attach the condition that if the owner takes the money, Uncle Sam gets some cut of the profits.  White collar firms that OVB described would opt out, the donut shop would take the money.

The real problem with the program was firms that saw no change in business got their payroll paid gratis, not that wealthy and/or Republican owners got their payrolls picked up.

[Berkut]

College costs have grown at an absurd pace, but this doesn't fix or even identify the causes. It is bizarre: college costs today are higher than they have ever been, and arguably the value of a degree is less than ever, but it is the legacy students that are aided rather than those that are just entering college.

I hate this argument. It appears to be reasonable, but almost never actually IS.

I mean, I don't see anyone who is making this argument now in the political sphere following it up with "...and here is my bi-partisan proposal to massively reform higher education funding in the US...."

[OttoVonBismarck]

Right, the biggest defense for Biden's action is literally nothing else will be done in the current political environment. (As an aside--Biden's action may not survive legal challenge because its legality is at least disputable, which is all the Alito-Thomas Junta needs to pass anti-Democrat rulings--I think it's probably legal under the expansive powers in the both the original Higher Education law from the 60s or 70s, and the act which nationalized much Student debt under Obama in 2010 which put most of this under Presidential purview.)

The second biggest defense, is for previously stated reasons, I do think this is good politics. The people who are upset about it are people who were always going to vote Republican anyway, and the people excited about it are disproportionately the sort of Democrats that are often flaky at voting.

I actually think the inevitable legal challenges could also be a political windfall for Biden, when the SCOTUS strikes this down it's going to help rile up the Dem base even more, maybe not a HUGE impact versus say the big impact of Roe v Wade, but it's more fuel to the fire.

[Valmy]

I paid off my student loans a long time ago, so I guess I'm a sucker.

I paid mine off as well. Not having to make payments on compound interest is more than enough reward than hand wringing I couldn't have been in debt far longer just to get an amount cancelled. OH POOR ME! I MISSED OUT ON YEARS OF MAKING MONTHLY PAYMENTS!!!11

But hey go ahead and just stop paying off all your debts and hope that they will all be cancelled at some point. You've done more moronic schemes in your time here.

Though, to be fair, my federal loan was pretty weak sauce. It was the private one that got idiotic with tons of fees and shit and took forever to pay off.

[Jacob]

With perfect hindsight would means testing have worked?  Honest question.

A high net worth owner can lay off staff due to covid-induced lack of business just as easily as a lower net worth individual can.

I think the issue is the amount of high net worth folks who had personal LLCs, who took large PPP loans that they just pocketed rather than use for wages. Or, slightly less noxious but still far from ideal, who took large PPP loans and paid for wages when their LLC weren't really distressed, meaning the PPP went straight to the bottom line as increased profit.

[Admiral Yi]

I think the issue is the amount of high net worth folks who had personal LLCs, who took large PPP loans that they just pocketed rather than use for wages. Or, slightly less noxious but still far from ideal, who took large PPP loans and paid for wages when their LLC weren't really distressed, meaning the PPP went straight to the bottom line as increased profit.

For the former, do you know how that worked?  I would have expected there to be *some* relationahip between payroll and the loan amount, but OVB is saying only 25% of PPP loans went to wages.  I personally don't know.  Did rich LLC guys say "I have one employee, me, and I made $2 million so lend me $2 million to pay myself?"

As to the latter, how would you know ahead of time if a loan recipient is going to be profitable or not?

[Jacob]

For the former, do you know how that worked?  I would have expected there to be *some* relationahip between payroll and the loan amount, but OVB is saying only 25% of PPP loans went to wages.  I personally don't know.  Did rich LLC guys say "I have one employee, me, and I made $2 million so lend me $2 million to pay myself?"

I don't - I'm seeing a fair amount of suggestions that it happened at scale, but I don't *know*. I'm definitely interested in having that confirmed / debunked one way or the other.

As to the latter, how would you know ahead of time if a loan recipient is going to be profitable or not?

You wouldn't, but I perhaps forgiveness could be tied to profitability?

[alfred russel]

College costs have grown at an absurd pace, but this doesn't fix or even identify the causes. It is bizarre: college costs today are higher than they have ever been, and arguably the value of a degree is less than ever, but it is the legacy students that are aided rather than those that are just entering college.

I hate this argument. It appears to be reasonable, but almost never actually IS.

I mean, I don't see anyone who is making this argument now in the political sphere following it up with "...and here is my bi-partisan proposal to massively reform higher education funding in the US...."

It isn't that hard to figure out why college costs have exploded and are out of alignment with international norms. Governments pay some costs, parents others. But the ultimate purse strings are also extended to 17 and 18 year olds who can take out massive loans with government support. And what do 17 and 18 year olds want? Awesome amenities. As a group they are not super well equipped to understand the implications of debt and assess if they can pay it off in the future, but are equipped to understand they want a hot tub in their building.

I was looking up my old college...the freshman dorm i stayed in is now over $4,800 a semester. That is a shared room with a common bathroom/shower/kitchen for the floor. That is insanely over market rent for the area for such a place. But it now comes with free laundry service because apparently students shouldn't have to worry about laundry in college and also puppies that are brought by every so often for students to play with because their lives are so stressful.

Setting up an expectation of student loan forgiveness is only going to pour fuel on this fire. Now a student can rationally be even less price sensitive than before.