"Sean Illing: What’s the Occam’s razor explanation for these UFO sightings?

Alexander Wendt: To me, the Occam’s razor explanation is ETs."

This guy really wants aliens to exist, and/or he doesn't understand what Occam's razor is. The simplest solution is that the things in the sky that we cannot identify are star-faring craft built by otherworldly beings...?

The navy videos are weird, don't get me wrong, but it seems like such a jump to say 'alien lifeforms in spaceships are the most likely cause.'

If you believe the pilots testimony what else could it be? Some sort of super advance technology being held secret by a government?

Star-faring craft built by otherworldly beings seems a pretty simple explanation. Getting people to accept that is the complicated part.

The male pronunciation is 'EVE-lin' versus the female 'ev-A-lin.'

It's borderline irrelevant. I'd want to see things like rent/mortgage payments alleviated or suspended for the duration.

Pretty much everybody has either rent or a mortgage. Therefore giving someone $1000 towards their rent/mortgage is basically equivalent to just giving them $1000, except that it's a ton of extra administrative complexity and it also screws over a few people who somehow don't qualify but still need help.

Whereas if you make the assistance "we pay the amount of your mortgage" instead of "we pay $1000" then you're giving much more of the money to affluent people, who presumably need it less.

That's not what he said. He didn't say, "give everyone $1000 towards their rent or mortgage". He said, temporarily suspend all rent and mortgage payments. As in, nobody pays any of it. Recurring expenses are what's going to destroy the economy so thoroughly that the great depression will look like a minor downtown. If nobody gets kicked out because they can't pay rent, or their mortgage, or the lease on their business, things might actually be able to resume once there's a handle on this.

I understand how that would work for Mortgage payments as they are controlled/facilitated by banks, and the government has the ability to coordinate with banks (in an ideal case). But how might the federal government enforce suspension of rent payments? Rent just goes to landlords (regular people) and is part of their gross income filed on their taxes. If you don't have to pay your rent, wouldn't we just be moving the buck from renters to landlords in terms of finnancial needs?

> If the landlords desperately need that rent just to do basic maintenance and repairs, and don't have enough saved to deal with a possible problem that might happen in the next month, then they don't deserve to own the property.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but what's the argument for that? On its surface, the proclamation that they 'don't deserve to own their property' seems a little draconian to me. What if a repair is required that was unforeseen and not basic?

That's what insurance is for, or maybe a loan.

If the repair is not basic, then it sounds like it's going to be very costly. If it's very costly, then the tenants missing a month or two of rent is not going to be enough to make a difference on the landlord being able to afford it. After all, the amount of money they should be raking in above the mortgage on the property is not generally going to be a large fraction of the total rent. So if the landlord can't swing a few hundred dollars for an unforeseen repair, then they aren't in sufficient financial shape to be owning and renting out that property, since the landlord (in normal circumstances) is fully responsible for keeping the property in good repair at all times. "I can't afford it" is not a valid excuse for not doing repairs, and the court system agrees with me.

> The landlords are using the rent to pay the mortgage on the property. If the banks suspend mortgage payments, then the landlords don't need to collect rent any more.

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.

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.

> Recurring expenses

Then what about all the other ones? Are we also suspending utility bills? Car loans? Property tax? Grocery bills?

Why should someone paying the same total amount in recurring expenses have more of them waived just because they happen to pay more in rent and less in transportation and utilities than somebody else?

It's fucking Disney, they are the power structure.

I am not a farmer, I fix sewing machines- but I see people still buy Singers, based on brand perceptions that are 50 years out of date. Modern Singer sewing machines are cheap garbage, but people remember their grandmothers or great grandmothers using these old, reliable machines, and accordingly, they buy Singer.

Same thing is happening with John Deere. It may take a very long time for the anti-consumer actions of the company to burn through decades of goodwill.

Would you recommend Bernina sewing machines? I've been doing some leather work and am considering to make machine stiched items too.

PS: WRT John Deere, our family business bought quite a few of them and when they refused to train our own workshop employees we sold all of them! The whole thing kind of amused me. Unless you are from the Free State, Massey Ferguson is pretty much your best option. And if you need something with more ploughing power, Landini is doing pretty well too. Actually, I think Italy is in a unique position at the moment to (if they actually wanted to) to grow quite a bit economically with some of their brands.