All Forum Posts by: Alvin Sylvain

 That's been tried before. The famous economist Milton Friedman was in favor of a negative income tax and I think he drafted up a bill for it. It was actually bandied about in Congress a bit, until he found out that Congress made amendments such that no other federal aid program would be removed. That was when he removed his support and became against it and eventually got it killed, even though the original thing was his idea.

The problem with government programs is that they are relatively easy to get started and almost impossible to get rid of. Once they start, they build up their own constituents and beneficiaries (and employees) who will fight tooth and nail for continuance, and there has never been a politician with the strength of character to say "No".

And who can really blame the politicians? They'll haul out all the wheelchairs and one-legged war veterans and the crying mothers with babies sobbing about losing some benefit, and the moron media will cover it with relish. The politician will be made to look like the worst villain since Attila the Hun, and he'll cave like a week-old souffle.

If UBI ever becomes the Law of the Land, you can bet your bottom dollar that each and every other form of government assistance will remain in full force.

That's just the way it works in modern politics.

God I'm sorry I got into this discussion. Where's the exit?

You don't win arguments by piling on more words. Let me try to be brief:

paraphrasing: "Since the invention of automobiles, the population of horses has gone down dramatically"

And we should care about that, why?

"20 Top Lawyers were beaten by A.I."

Sucks to be a Top Lawyer. I'd have to imagine that to any Robot that can beat out a lawyer, selling real estate should be child's play.

"So where are all those replaced paralegals supposed to go?"

If you read any part of my previous discussion, you already know my answer -- it is impossible to know, it is impossible to predict. I expect fully a third at least of today's job titles did not exist in 1819. But if History is any guide, those paralegals will find something. Something will be invented that Robots can't do yet, something that it is impossible for us to know today. And they'll find something a lot faster if they don't have the Government giving them a Crutch.

Yah it won't be perfect, nothing ever is. But society overall, including displaced paralegals, will be better off in the long run.

@Dana Whicker here reminds us how automation put 10's of thousands of elevator operators out of work.

I don't know what all of them did with themselves, but I'll wager 6 to 18 months later, almost all of them found gainful employment elsewhere and 10 years later, none of them wanted to go back to operating elevators. Perhaps very few of them became engineers, and fewer still rose to be CEO. But most found something.

The point is, society as a whole benefits from every new advancement in technology, despite the inevitable temporary pain. As I said earlier, it sucks to be that guy who loses his job, but he's the only one who can decide what alternatives are suitable for him; not us. Enlarging the Welfare State can not make things better for anybody. All it can do, all it ever could do, is reward people's incompetence and laziness.

You know what happens when you reward people for something? You get more of it.

 2020 is not guaranteed, and 2024 is anybody's game.

We always check the applicant's credit using the SSN, among other things.

We had one occasion where apparently the SSN did not actually exist. PASS.

If, for whatever reason, we can not check the applicant's credit, PASS.

Secondarily: how the heck do you know they are "good people"? Are you aware there is a category of "Professional Scammers" who make a living out of fooling inexperienced landlords into letting them live essentially rent-free?

Here's a good website, check out Number 3 in particular: https://www.abodo.com/blog/landlord-renter-scams/

"The law of tough renters bounds them to lie a lot and over time they grow quite proficient at it"

More specific to the topic:

"The big question is how many landlords are going to jump ahead of this demand and automatically bump the rents a superficial amount now that everyone has an extra $1,000 every month.

QUESTION: If you were a landlord and had a 10-unit apartment building, and suddenly all your tenants are now receiving an extra $1,000/mo, how tempted would you be to raise the rent sharply for no other reason?"

FOLLOWUP QUESTION: If you are a landlord with a 10-unit apartment building, and suddenly your taxes go up in order pay everyone an extra $1000/month, how can you possibly not raise the rent?

I just wanted to make a brief point on this "Artificial Intelligence will Take all our Jobs" scare. And make no mistake, that's all it is -- a scare.

Every time we have an advance in technology, it costs somebody their job. Sucks for that somebody to be sure. Yet, a few years later, nobody would ever think of going back to not having said advance. And somehow we always find new things that need doing, people are willing to pay to have someone do it, and other people are willing to do it for pay. And generally for overall more pay than what we were all making before. Or, at the very least, what we are paid will buy more than before.

History has proven this time and time again.

Imagine the blacksmith who loses his job because nobody rides a horse anymore. So instead we have auto mechanics, aircraft mechanics, computer programmers, offshore wind farm engineers, information security analysts -- and hundreds of other things that were not even thought of a hundred years ago.

This whole mess about "Robots will take your job" is just another scare tactic used by the Socialists and people leaning that way to invoke an ever larger Welfare State, considering every other tactic to convince people has failed as badly as Socialism has.

So then you ask, "But Alvin, what POSSIBLE jobs could there be after the Robots take over?" Heck, I don't know. Did Henry Ford know we'd invent "information security analyst" when his automobile took over from horses? Did Alexander Bell know that, after his telephone made couriers obsolete, there'd be a market for "communications specialists"? No, they had no way of knowing what future jobs would come into being.

And today, we still have no way of knowing what future jobs will come into being. But we can rest assured we will come up with something.

Isn't there some old saying that the best way to get a tree is to plant it 20 years ago, and the second best time is to plant it right now?

Sub $500 what? Per month? Sell that car and buy a 2015 Honda Civic.

I believe you can still get an FHA loan in the Jumbo category, 3.5% down. Not sure.

Sell one investment property, use the profit to increase your down payment.

Or possibly it's just too soon to buy a primary residence that expensive.

Wait a minute, Hawaii? Nevermind. Maybe everything is Jumbo there.

The best way to find out is to get references to good lenders or mortgage brokers in every area you're interested in, then file the applications.

You can compare one loan package to another once you have the approval documents.