That didn't take long... (Big Business cashes in on small business bailouts)

[Black Aeronaut]

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/busin...anies.html

Yeah.  Pretty much exactly what we all figured would happen.

[Matrix Dragon]

Yeah, I saw a few of these pile up last week.

[Rajvik]

you all do realize that there are Big Busineses that are being decimated by this as well, anything involving the travel or vacation industries are going to have to fight to stay solvent, not because of mismanagement, (like the auto industry or the banks in 08) but because of an outside context problem, some of them should be getting bailed out, and others are doing the right thing and returning the money they were allotted because they are still solvent

[hazard]

And yet the people in the USA are not getting bailed out the way the businesses are. They are getting nothing or not even a month's expenses and told they need to last two and a half months on that while they're already short on money and loaded with debt.

Hell, it would not be so vexing if those businesses needed it, but they only gave it back because they got caught, not because they had no need for it. There's a difference between a company that goes on the dole, cuts wages for everyone while the top level management takes a similar cut or even foregoes all payment and bonuses, and simply doesn't give out dividends to their investments, and a company that begs the government for money, fires everyone they can and cuts wages of everyone they can't fire while the top level management keeps raking in the money while every penny they saved and managed to beg from the government they gave out as dividends or stock buybacks or any other trick that made the owners richer.

It's expected of the general public that they have at least a year's worth of expenses saved up for emergencies and blamed for their problems when they don't and have to pay up anyway. But big business? They move vast sums of money but they stand on thin relative values, with not a month of operating cash.

[Matrix Dragon]

ALL HAIL CAPITALISM! CORPORATIONS DESERVE MONEY! FUCK THE POOR!

[Labster]

I'm completely okay with giving big businesses money to pay salaries of workers they furlough.

And I'm well aware of how the tourism sector is being killed -- except for hotels willing to take government contracts to house homeless or quarantined peeps. I spend a lot of time thinking about the travel industry because of the fanfic I'm writing has 6+ characters who work in tourism. (I think they'd have to start delivering DoorDash by gondola or something)

But if this is real capitalism, we can't have a system where the rewards go to the shareholders and the risks go to the government. So there are two solutions:
(1) Sorry guys, bankruptcy time
(2) Businesses get capital in exchange for the government holding shares.
I don't mind risking government money as long as we have a chance of reward. But lets not do handouts to publicly listed companies okay?

[robkelk]

I don't mind risking government money as long as we have a chance of reward.  But lets not do handouts to publicly listed companies okay?

Agreed. Getting repeated bailouts is how Bombardier ended up out of the aircraft-manufacturing business, to give one non-USA example off the top of my head.