[kadonoishi]

So stop all payments. Nobody pays rent, landowners don’t pay their mortgages, banks don’t pay interest. Companies don’t pay dividends, bonds don’t pay interest. Just stop using money to organize productive activity for a few months until the coronavirus curve flattens.

If all payments are stopped for three months, then it’s simply hitting the “Pause” button on the whole money system. There are no economic data for that quarter. GDP is meaningless, unemployment is meaningless. That quarter is a big fat missing data point.

Three months later everyone comes out of their houses and goes back to work. Paychecks resume, rents resume, landlords resume paying their mortgages, and no one ever catches up on any payments from the missing period. Just pretend we skipped three months ahead via a sci-fi time knot.

[Ghjklov]

This is the kind of solution I would like to see. But you just know, there's a number of people with the power and influence to decide whether or not something get's done DESPISE the idea that people are allowed to have a roof over their head, eat food, and be happy without paying them anything.

[sschueller]

This doesn't work because not every one has stopped working.

The best solution would be for the government to pay the bottom and have the payments "trickle up".

[kadonoishi]

The government prints money and sends out those $1000 monthly checks so as to continue using money to organize transactions, and the people working essential jobs continue to get paychecks.

Make the distinction between financial capital and money. Money as medium of exchange continues to be used. Money as financial capital assets is paused for the duration of the crisis.

What’s the function of capital? To allocate labor to the highest-value uses. We can’t be bothered with that during a pandemic.

Capital allocation is important, and it is long-term. The pandemic is about short-term physical survival. Providing food water medicine electricity is straightforward enough that it can be done through command, and through the sheer momentum of our existing systems.

We need to drop back to a simpler version of our physical economy for awhile, where people sit in their houses and only use basic necessities. Once it’s all clear we can come out and resume the previous activities; but how exactly do we effectively pause the non-essential activities?

This article is pointing out, rightly, that landlords and rents are non-essential. So pause them along with the rest of the non-essential activities.

[robocat]

How does trickle up pay the commercial rent for the example in the article with an events business?

From article: “[businesses have gone] from regular trading to zero revenue in a week. My own sector, events, is literally illegal. Bars, restaurants and lots of others are in the same position or soon will be.”, “Some of our landlords have agreed to push a percentage of our rent back to later in the year, but it still has to be paid back. So we’ll pay double rent as we emerge into what will be a catastrophic recession.”

I agree the government paying his staff helps the staff and helps fix his other issue “My own business is spending every last cent of our cash to keep our 60-odd staff employed in some way, even though we’re not allowed to do what we do.”

[romwell]

Aaaaand where will this money "trickle up"?

Surprise, it's the landlords! And on taxpayers' dime, at that.

Paying the bottom is what needs to be done. But we also need to halt the flow of money around real estate.

[adverbly]

As a pragmatist who likes simplicity, this makes total sense.

As a dev, this terrifies me. I can't imagine how many bugs this might cause in financial software.

[nybble41]

And no one pays for goods either? I suppose it does make things simpler in the long run if everyone just starves. No need to worry about restarting the economy in three months, there won't be anyone left by then to care.

Money can freeze in place, but people still have needs which must be met in a timely manner and by freezing all monetary transactions you've thrown away the best means we have to organize the effort of satisfying those needs.

[candybar]

This doesn't work. Credit is an essential part of the modern economy and not everything can be shut down. For people to consume even the very basics, lots of intermediate transactions need to be made using credit and if you cease interest payments entirely, no one will lend and the system will freeze. Keep in in mind that no government actually has any authority to do this either, as credit markets are global. To unilaterally cease payments and order ceasing of payments is akin to (but actually worse) national default, which will completely disintegrate the financial markets globally. Even for ordinary people around the world to just survive, we still need international trade.

At a high level, credit and money are simply means to align incentives across a wide variety of actors and ensure cooperation. While theoretically it's not impossible to reorganize the economy as not to need it, it would effectively require a complete command economy and I don't think anyone would be able to do this effectively in the short term without completely destroying any semblance of the market economy in the long run.

The obvious play here is just to pay individuals (not businesses) enough money and access to healthcare in the medium term and to let businesses (that aren't obviously strategic to national interests, those can be considered separately) do what they need to do. There are already legal mechanisms in place for businesses to avoid paying creditors and landlords. This is a strange plea for a handout. If the market changed as to make their rent abnormally low relative to their profits, they wouldn't be paying extra rent.

For residential tenants, rent forgiveness at least makes some sense, though I think direct payments to individuals are fairer and avoid cascading effects. For businesses that during the good times keep all surpluses for themselves as profits, to argue for rent forgiveness during the hard times is comical.

[NicoJuicy]

Not going to happen in the US.

Both Trump and KC properties ( his son in law) are landlords. There is a documentary on Netflix about it ( fyi: it's really bad)

And I'm pretty sure they are not "in the game" to make it better for the average American.

Edit: if downvote, please explain why. I'm 100% sure his self interest isn't seperate of his function. Additionally, the family involvement in the white House and Trump not seperating his business as previous presidents did, IS a perfect example to proof my point.

Nothing indicates the opposite.