If you understand that rental contracts are socially desirable in normal times, then you should be wary of the idea of having government break them during a pandemic. To put it clearly: anyone who advocates an eviction moratorium is being deeply immoral.
Speaking of recent essays, I also wrote on baseball, race and economics.
in 1965, in a sense only the National League was integrated. Only one American League team, the Minnesota Twins, had more than one black contributor. The Twins’ black cadre included catcher Earl Battey, shortstop Zoilo Versalles, right fielder Tony Oliva, and pitcher Jim “Mudcat” Grant. Not coincidentally, that team waltzed to a pennant.
The moratorium combined with all the rental assistance money is perfectly fine from a moral standpoint, at least no worse than any other kind of pandemic restriction. But since the rental assistance money that was appropriated never really made it into the hands of renters, the whole thing is a hot mess right now
An eviction moratorium plus rental-assistance money might be OK from a moral standpoint *if* the money went to the landlords. But if it only went into the hands of the tenants, there’d be no guarantee whatsoever that they’d pass it along to the landlords who might otherwise evict them.
A non-trivial fraction of people who’re delinquent on their rent have no intention whatsoever of paying off the landlord. Their goal is to dig in for as long as they can, taking advantage of every tenant-rights law in the books to live rent-free until the appeals are exhausted and the sheriff arrives, then to move on, leaving the landlord with a trashed property and a large uncollectable debt. Give them rental-assistance money, and they’ll spend it on nice things for themselves rather than paying off the debt on which they intended to welch anyhow.
I think the entire point is that if you’re going to pay Person As rent, why not person B? It’s hard to come up with a filter that is fair (politically or morally) and non-gameable. Unemployment insurance was for instance stolen either directly (fraud) or indirectly (lots of people turning down jobs they could get).
Most people who have the money to pay rent don’t want to accumulate 12 months of back rent that someone will try to collect and will ruin their credit. So this was mainly a way to give money to broke people who don’t care about their credit.
The moral of the story from a landlord or lender perspective is to adjust the business model to assume that the state will make eviction or foreclosure effectively prohibitive and to do all one can without getting into legal trouble to be more selective about properties and tenants or debtors. Average rents for people in risky classes must necessarily rise to incorporate the insurance cost.
Or else, to have some special capacity and be prepared to resort to less savory methods of convincing people to either pay up or get the hell out without needing to involve the sheriff.
Wasn’t the purpose of much of the stimulus money, such as PPP loans, inflated unemployment insurance, and multiple rounds of free government cash, to help people cover their bills?
Jonathan Turley on Biden “saying the quiet part out loud”:
https://jonathanturley.org/2021/08/04/biden-calls-tor-extending-the-eviction-moratorium-despite-being-unconstitutional/
Expect this to be the modus operandi from now on…unconstitutional behavior executed under the knowledge of higher court ponderousness and red tape. They will literally make it up as they go along passing directives off as laws from the executive while waiting for the courts to declare what they already know to be illegal as such.
There are officially no laws, but you already knew that already.
On a related note to “There are officially no laws”:
I took a university class “Philosophy of Law” at a top tier public university. The Professor strongly advocated for “legal realism”, which advovcates expansive judicial discretion, and judges should basically make the laws as they go, and decide how laws should work with their own judgement rather than being constrained by written laws produced by a separate legislature.
Then, political groups can effectively change laws by training and selecting the right judges, rather than by going through the legislature. It seems like this strategy is aligned with the Demcoratic Party.
I’d like to hear Kling’s view on this.
“Then, political groups can effectively change laws by training and selecting the right judges, rather than by going through the legislature. It seems like this strategy is aligned with the Demcoratic Party.”
It most definitely is when they’re on the back foot, like they were from 2016-2020 (remember our judicial friend in Hawaii?), but most certainly unnecessary when they’re not.
“Legal realism” is another made up term that simply means ‘we made this up to justify at this moment what we’re trying to achieve’.
And one more thing…speaking of ‘legal realism’…
The Rubicon has been crossed. Using the legal system, or following the rules of the game, puts one not just at a distinct disadvantage now, but is demonstrably catastrophic. Not only are you going to lose, you are in fact signaling your opponents that you are going to lose and to an ever increasing proportion of your own supporters that you are going to lose.
There are no rules anymore, not for them, and haven’t been for a long time. Stop following them. There’s no high-ground anymore, it’s illusory in a low trust society, which is what America has become.
When I read Moneyball one of the themes was “this strategy helps you win, but it makes baseball more boring.” I don’t wish to rehash that premise (it does for some, it doesn’t for others).
Similarly, I watched a documentary one time about early Curling championships and one team devised a way to dominate the sport but it was super boring to watch and to play. At a championship one time the crowd started chanting “Boring! Boring!”. It prompted to sport to implement rules that basically outlawed that strategy.
Similarly I read a recent article about baseball pitcher careers that are probably over because of some sticky substance on the ball being banned so it rotates slightly slower and now some star pitchers are trash.
In Basketball, a movie from the 90s from the South Park guys, they railed against “free agency” and how players had no loyalty to the teams they were a part of.
In Japan I remember they had limits on how many foreigners could be on a team. For Sumo and Baseball at least. The theory was that the point of sports was to bring social cohesion, and that bringing in foreign ringers was a zero sum game that went against that goal.
All Sportsball is, ultimately, some kind of meaningless Red Queen race. At least with actual war rather than proxy war the victors pass on their genes and there is some kind of purpose, but Sportsball has no great purpose really. I enjoyed myself some Sportsball before it got woke, but none of it really matters. There is something enjoyable about the pinnacle of human achievement and effort it represents, but who reaches that pinnacle is kind of arbitrary and shouldn’t concern us that much.
By contrast meritocracy in say engineering and several other fields has positive external spillovers that make it extremely important that we get it right. It’s the opposite of a Red Queen race.
I dunno.
Suppose nation was attacked and a war began. So the economy changes quite a bit, and most people can’t pay the rent, but you are trying to build morale to fight the opposing enemy.
So a lot of evictions occur, and people are living in tents and cardboard houses in front of empty apartment buildings.
….
But if we should become so appalled at the temporary eviction moratorium, how about the routine near-seizure of private land through property zoning regulations?
I hope ASK devotes a 10-part series to the evils of property zoning.
Why would most people not be able to make rent in war economy, which implies huge labor shortages?
XD–good point.
Depends on nature of war, of course.
A modern war might not call for manpower, but could seriously undercut labor demand.
A few missiles strike here or there around Taiwan, a nuke maybe, and trade with China is banned. Ships no longer even visit Japan, too dangerous. Investment grinds to a halt, Wall Street indices cut in half.
My preferences on the pandemic have alway been to roughly do nothing. Handle like a flu epidemic, sequester old people until vaccinated and go on.
But as I understand it, even former libertarians have bought into the lockdowns and business restrictions, and thus many people did lose jobs.
I say end all the extra social welfare and go back to work. Keep the border sealed, and promote tight labor markets. End property zoning.
At the outset of the Pandemic and the need to provide assistance to the needy i suggested this to many who live in Condominium, and Coops:
Instead of massive borrowing by gov, a special tax assessment should be levied against all income above a certain level on a progressive basis. Response to such action by the American people would be and still will be interesting.
As a matter of fact not having done so, some assessment for a year or two should be done for any number of things such as:
moratorium on evictions; some parts of infrastructure and other items. Obviously it needs to recognized that there is a limit to doing so.
Continually running up debt imposes burdens , the impact of which is much debated with all seeing that trouble ahead has some positive probability to it.