Re:One way to fight a coronavirus recession: $1k for every A...
by magduf on Tuesday March 17, 2020 @08:07PM
(#22612120)
Landlords do not need to invest in the S&P 500 right now; keeping the stock market going is not more important than people who can't pay rent.
If the landlords are retired, they have Social Security and probably other sources of income. If they can't live on that, then they're living beyond their means and don't need to be landlords.
If landlords can't float a little money to pay utilities, then they're in desperately bad financial shape, and shouldn't be landlords. What are they going to do when one of their tenants doesn't pay rent? Just let the utilities for other tenants get turned off? I'd be OK with simply seizing the properties from landlords that can't manage their properties properly.
How do you know it goes to a mortgage? The property could be owned by a retired couple and the rent is the income they live on, or a charity and the rent is how they fund their operations.
Or it could be owned by a regular old smelly landlord who just takes the rent money and invests it in the S&P 500 -- which, if you take it away multiplied by millions of landlords, does a Bad Thing to the stock market right when you want the opposite of that.
Sometimes rent includes utilities. What does the landlord pay that with?
I imagine you also expect to waive property tax or the landlords would have nothing to pay that with either, but then what are you using to fund local governments?
You can't just delete an industry and expect it to have no untoward effect.