It’s darkly funny seeing TSA agents pulling out water bottles, which may be filled with highly volatile liquid explosives, and chucking them five or six feet on a parabolic trajectory to a trash can surrounded by people.
The point of terrorism is not the immediate killing and destruction. The point is the terror, the state of fright and panic, which makes the victim lose their mind and do stupid, self-destructive things. This is the real, large-scale, lasting impact.
By this metric, 9/11 is the single biggest and most resounding victory of terrorists since August 1914 when a terrorist attack provoked WWI.
I'm not convinced by this article that because we are able to put a moratorium on evictions and student loan interest during a once-in-a-century crisis that it means it's all bullshit and we don't have to do it.
Loan interest helps cover inflation over time (and makes up for the fact that the government's money could have been used somewhere else that would generate interest). If there's no interest, then the loan becomes a better and better deal for the student over time and worse and worse for the government over time. We want the system to remain solvent, not run out of money.
Now an argument could be made that the interest rates they are charging are too high, but I doubt most people (and the person who wrote this article) have enough information to make a good case for that. I imagine if nothing else there's also administration fees and accommodating for students that either default on their loans or go into forbearance or other situations.
As for no evictions. If people can't be evicted, then there's no incentive to pay rent, besides wrecking your credit, which a lot of people don't have great credit to begin with, and a decent amount of people decide to stop paying even when not in a pandemic until the landlord goes through the (sometimes long, like 90+ days) eviction process.
Maybe we could have some sort of insurance put into place that allows for some hardships like disability, but I think that's one thing disability pay is supposed to be used for anyway, so it already exists. It's not super easy to evict people to begin with in most places, so a landlord might be willing to work with you for a month or two if you can make the case that it is truly a temporary situation.
Of course it's not a temporary situation for most of the people affected right now. We have massive unemployment, and very few companies hiring, so of course people are in trouble, and in trouble long-term. Making millions of families homeless all at once is a recipe for disaster and total civil upheaval, so it makes sense to put a moratorium right now.
Although the government isn't doing enough to keep it going (and GOP has 180'd and decided screw everyone, we're not helping anyone anymore) and looks like we're going to have exactly that horror scenario play out within the next few months, most likely.
But that doesn't mean that evictions are bullshit when we're not in a pandemic scenario.
Also, I don't think the article's premise is bullshit, and I agree with the TSA example mostly, I just think some of its examples are poor, and poorly defended.
The way we do student loans, with the educational institution having no negative effects when the student fails to get a job that pays it back - it's terrible. The students can't expunge the loan in bankruptcy, and colleges have a lot of financial encouragement to make costs such that they go as high as the loans do. These loans actually greatly retard the financial growth of society because the trillions owed mean people delay buying a house, can't spend money on other things. Separate from interest rates, student loans are terrible for the economy. Not in theory, but in clear and easy view.
I would agree there are serious issues with student loans, just that charging interest isn't necessarily one of them (again, the rate might be too high, I do know people that have been paying for years and owe more now than when they started, that's screwed up).
I am still under student loans myself and have been paying them for over 10 years at this point. I was on track to pay them off by the end of the year, but decided to stop paying when they paused interest and allowed pausing payments, to give us more money for other things, since my wife is currently only working 2 days a week and making 40% of her income right now anyway.
But in order to actually start making head way on my loans I had to start overpaying by about 25% what they required every month. Before that I wasn't making much progress. Not everyone can afford to do that (in fact my wife is stuck under a much heavier student loan burden than I ever was).
Again, if there is no interest, the incentive to pay them off drops quite a bit, like what both me and my wife are doing right now.
If you don't have the money to pay the rent and all the jobs you could take are now illegal to do due to the quarantine, there's little point to press you. You likely don't have anything liquid enough to pay the rent anyway.
If you are evicted, you go to a shelter, apply for more and more help, and cost taxpayers more and more, all while your life and lives of your family members are being ruined. The now-vacant apartment stays empty, because moving under the quarantine regime is technically hard, hard, and few people have the money needed to move anyway.
It's a lose-lose situation.
It's much more reasonable to pause your rent payments until the extraordinary stuff ends (or, in worst case, becomes the new norm). In many places this was / is the accepted solution.
I don't think we are in disagreement actually. I am for pausing rent payments during the crisis (during the entire crisis even, not just the three months or so that the government seemed to have been for).
The author seemed to say to me that because it's apparently no big deal to pause evictions during a pandemic (i.e. the world didn't end), that evictions are bullshit outside of pandemics as well. I would argue that it makes perfect sense to pause evictions during this extraordinary time, but evictions are still a necessary function during a normal economy.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 24.1 ms ] threadBy this metric, 9/11 is the single biggest and most resounding victory of terrorists since August 1914 when a terrorist attack provoked WWI.
So it goes :(
Loan interest helps cover inflation over time (and makes up for the fact that the government's money could have been used somewhere else that would generate interest). If there's no interest, then the loan becomes a better and better deal for the student over time and worse and worse for the government over time. We want the system to remain solvent, not run out of money.
Now an argument could be made that the interest rates they are charging are too high, but I doubt most people (and the person who wrote this article) have enough information to make a good case for that. I imagine if nothing else there's also administration fees and accommodating for students that either default on their loans or go into forbearance or other situations.
As for no evictions. If people can't be evicted, then there's no incentive to pay rent, besides wrecking your credit, which a lot of people don't have great credit to begin with, and a decent amount of people decide to stop paying even when not in a pandemic until the landlord goes through the (sometimes long, like 90+ days) eviction process.
Maybe we could have some sort of insurance put into place that allows for some hardships like disability, but I think that's one thing disability pay is supposed to be used for anyway, so it already exists. It's not super easy to evict people to begin with in most places, so a landlord might be willing to work with you for a month or two if you can make the case that it is truly a temporary situation.
Of course it's not a temporary situation for most of the people affected right now. We have massive unemployment, and very few companies hiring, so of course people are in trouble, and in trouble long-term. Making millions of families homeless all at once is a recipe for disaster and total civil upheaval, so it makes sense to put a moratorium right now.
Although the government isn't doing enough to keep it going (and GOP has 180'd and decided screw everyone, we're not helping anyone anymore) and looks like we're going to have exactly that horror scenario play out within the next few months, most likely.
But that doesn't mean that evictions are bullshit when we're not in a pandemic scenario.
Also, I don't think the article's premise is bullshit, and I agree with the TSA example mostly, I just think some of its examples are poor, and poorly defended.
I am still under student loans myself and have been paying them for over 10 years at this point. I was on track to pay them off by the end of the year, but decided to stop paying when they paused interest and allowed pausing payments, to give us more money for other things, since my wife is currently only working 2 days a week and making 40% of her income right now anyway.
But in order to actually start making head way on my loans I had to start overpaying by about 25% what they required every month. Before that I wasn't making much progress. Not everyone can afford to do that (in fact my wife is stuck under a much heavier student loan burden than I ever was).
Again, if there is no interest, the incentive to pay them off drops quite a bit, like what both me and my wife are doing right now.
If you are evicted, you go to a shelter, apply for more and more help, and cost taxpayers more and more, all while your life and lives of your family members are being ruined. The now-vacant apartment stays empty, because moving under the quarantine regime is technically hard, hard, and few people have the money needed to move anyway.
It's a lose-lose situation.
It's much more reasonable to pause your rent payments until the extraordinary stuff ends (or, in worst case, becomes the new norm). In many places this was / is the accepted solution.
The author seemed to say to me that because it's apparently no big deal to pause evictions during a pandemic (i.e. the world didn't end), that evictions are bullshit outside of pandemics as well. I would argue that it makes perfect sense to pause evictions during this extraordinary time, but evictions are still a necessary function during a normal economy.