Searchable PPP Loan Data • Hacker News Board

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#281

Post by mardifoufs » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 9:39 PM UTC

schoolornot wrote: post #257

digitaltrees wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great response. I wish all of the people criticizing these efforts would actually try to design a better program. Even the thought exercise would show how difficult it would be. Easier to crap on the work of others than actually do it yourself. I also wish they would think about the consequences of no action. They probably don’t realize that cascade bank failures and supply chain disruptions happen fast and become pe…

I remain unconvinced that so many companies were on "thin ice" that a do nothing approach would have caused a collapse. Any evidence of this? I would've been okay-ish with the arrangement if there was some narrow qualification criteria like being in the grocery business or medical supply chain, etc. Fine dining restaurants: not essential Summer camps: not essential Non-profits: not essential Law firms: not essential…

Yes, but the vast majority of the money is going to salaries. I'd even argue that there is absolutely no problem in funding even most of the "non essential" businesses. And to say that businesses were on thin ice by april is an understatement by the way: revenue disappeared overnight, lending froze almost overnight, liquidity became almost impossible to access. Even by early april half small businesses could not afford to pay rent, much less salaries. The financial system has never seen anything like what happened to march, I can't stress enough that almost every single "pipe" that make up systems we all depend on was collapsing. Programs like these took aways tons of uncertainty and deep fears of a recovery that would take a very, very long time. Things got much better when government support boosted confidence and guaranteed that people will still have money to spend.

Now I've heard people argue that compensation for lost salaries should've been paid directly to the employees if they lost their jobs. But to put it mildly, recovery and return back to normal would have been extraordinarily harder if most of the non essential parts of the economy don't exist anymore.

The price of letting everything go bankrupt only to reopen from scratch later is enormous and would amount to incredible waste not only of money but also years of work. The 150k may have been way too much for a local pizzeria, but it's better to overshoot than to aim for much better money allocation and risk losing precious time. You have to keep in mind that not only do businesses have to pay back the loans (if the money didn't go to salaries) but also that we will have ample time to take a closer look at each individual claim and punish fraud retroactively. The process is already starting as we can see with the linked website.

At the end of the day, we just couldn't afford to have a better PPP program because no matter how much money we lose on fraud and waste, the alternative would have always been more expensive.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#282

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 9:40 PM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #276

lotsofpulp wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I contend it didn’t strengthen the employees’ bargaining power, for the reasons I stated above. Unconditional cash would have. The powers that be know that loans obligations have been made that can only be satisfied if labor costs remain contained. Their primary objective is to make sure the mortgages keep getting paid, and paying employees double would endanger that. An easy illustration is the fact that “essential”…

There are no “powers that be” if you don’t like the system then change it. Start a company, pay people higher wages, build a competitive advantage. Or run for office. If you think there is some coordinated effort to oppress then build a counter effort. I suspect what you would find is not some grand conspiracy but emergent properties from competitive forces.

I know there isn’t a grand conspiracy. It’s just a consequence of capital owners also being the decision makers. Why would the capital owners make a decision to reduce their power?

And a lone businessman can’t just pay workers more and make the world right. If I decide to pay people more, and run the numbers and figure out I can afford to spend $5M on a piece of land to develop, and my competitor decides to project paying people much less, they can afford to spend $6M for the same piece of land. So guess which business ends up existing? The one that doesn’t pay higher wages. Same situation with people choosing to shop at stores that offer lower prices.

It would have to be a nationwide effort to transfer wealth, such as UBI or higher minimum wages. Otherwise we keep going as is with an ever widening wealth/income gap.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#283

Post by eric_b » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 9:41 PM UTC

throwaway_USD wrote: post #274

eric_b wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think the way I described it was fine. These are loans. I don't know anyone who's had even a single dollar forgiven yet. As far as I know there has been no official "forgiveness". What do you call a loan that you still owe? A loan. Once the forgiveness guidance is finalized and people are actually receiving it, then perhaps I will recharacterize my description.

>I don't know anyone who's had even a single dollar forgiven yet. This is what I meant by political couching: Do you know any one who has paid back a single dollar? >These are loans. Fine care to loan me $1M and I'll pay you back 20% with interest.

Loans always have delayed payment terms, you're being willfully obtuse.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#284

Post by throwaway_kufu » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 9:46 PM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #241

throwaway_kufu wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Mandatory shut downs, in the absence of financial assistance, is arguably a “taking” under the constitution False, government does this to businesses all the time and compensation isn’t due. Take hurricanes in Florida and mandatory shutdown/evacuation orders, there is no promised compensation. Besides under imminent domain cases, I’d like to see some case law to support taxpayers bailing out businesses.

Actually there is promised compensation in hurricane emergencies in the form of SBA EIDL (economic injury disaster loans). The existence of imminent domain proves my point, there are circumstances where tax payers owe An obligation to property owners and their actions are restricted by that obligation. Now we can argue about whether this specific act is a taking but I destroyed your blanket argument that tax payers d…

In imminent domain if your property is taken you receive compensation, here many businesses closed and didn’t get PPP money, the government picked winners and losers.

Again feel free to cite any law supporting your argument: 1) the shutdown orders were a government taking of private property; And 2.) compensation for a temporary taking.

You missed the entire point of hurricanes, before any damage occurs governments order shutdowns and evacuations, there is no taking and there is no compensation for those shutdown and evacuation orders.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#285

Post by mbesto » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:01 PM UTC

digitaltrees wrote: post #163

mbesto wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Forgiveness requires documentation on employees retained, wage history, and is capped at $20k/employee maximum. And of course a piece of that comes back to the government in terms of payroll taxes. Just because a company took a 1M loan, doesn't mean it will be 100% forgiven. I think your misunderstanding is that the rules actually get followed. What happens when everyone in the scheme comes back and says "the econo…

Why would it be a problem to redesign a social policy in the social interest? So what if everyone one comes and says PPP needs to be amended to do better in service of the country. Isn’t that what we want. It’s a good thing that they increased the spending period from 8 weeks to 24. Most restaurants were closed by state orders and were faced with forcing employees to come off unemployment (and employees resisted beca…

> Most restaurants were closed by state orders and were faced with forcing employees to come off unemployment

And yet those businesses either didn't get the loans or got a minuscule amount comparatively speaking (especially to those who knew how to game the system).

> in no way are PPP loans close to rape or murder in magnitude of harm so it’s an inflammatory analogy with no purpose

It was meant as a comparative analogy (murder to rape, as PPP to ) not from (rape as to PPP, as murder is to ). That was my purpose - two bad immediately recognizable crimes in society with one being considered worse.

> Would you rather have 1% bad loans or a wave of bankruptcies and layoffs triggering a depression that last 10 years? What about 10% bad loans? 50%?

I'd rather have a civil debate about whether that's effective (see Japan's lost decade for comparisons of why quantitative easing has even longer potentially more disastrous issues). You're kidding yourself if you unilaterally think that the PPP program is the only way to alleviate yourself from a "wave of bankruptcies and layoffs triggering a depression that last 10 years". Again, we're just kicking the can down the road, like we always do.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#286

Post by ryanwaggoner » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:06 PM UTC

adrr wrote: post #240

JPKab wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of weirdness lately about people expecting companies to not take the money. The virus wasn't any company's fault. The choice to respond to the virus by shutting down the economy wasn't any company's fault. Previous epidemics in human history have been dealt with by simply accepting a death rate that modern society, via government policy, has chosen to not accept. This was an unprecedented response that…

Not all businesses shutdown. The issue is that a bunch of businesses took the free money who didn’t need it. We made a choice not to take it because we are booming during crisis. The stimulus checks had criteria to receive them and most people who are doing very well did not get a stimulus check. PPP could easily had a requirement that it had to be paid back if sales/rev increased during 2020 tax year. Instead the mo…

There's a strong case to be made that, given our position as the world's reserve currency (without any clear challenger) and our dirt-cheap borrowing costs, the national debt is pretty close to free money. It's not like we're ever going to roll up our sleeves and pay it off, or even down. We'll just inflate it away. I'm not arguing for unrestricted spending, but a couple trillion to avoid economic collapse, borrowed at effectively 0% interest, seems like a deal worth taking.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#287

Post by throwaway_USD » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:15 PM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #278

throwaway_USD wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The idea that it's one giant money suck for businesses with no immediate return to the economy is not really accurate - it's not a zero-sum game. No one argues $600B wouldn't help the economy. Can you point to where I said PPP will not help the economy? Most people are starting to understand the fraud involved with PPP and understanding those funds could have gone to individuals and the money would have found its wa…

> those funds could have gone to individuals and the money would have found its way back into the economy just the same...only faster how could this possibly be true? the economy started tanking because people stopped going out and spending money. giving people money wouldnt fix this.

>the economy started tanking because people stopped going out and spending money.

People continued spending money...mortgage/rent; car loans/insurance; food; etc...

>giving people money wouldnt fix this.

PPP didn't fix it did it?

There is an eviction and foreclosure crisis looming...giving people money may have done a better job than PPP in avoiding this coming disaster.

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#288

Post by throwaway_USD » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:16 PM UTC

apinstein wrote: post #271

throwaway_USD wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most of them will owe ~20% of the loan back to their lender since they had minimal other expenses. That was my entire point is that the loans were designed to forgive a minimum of 75% of the loan, but it is 100% forgiven if they limited their loan application to 8 weeks of payroll. All the people you know took 20% more for salary than they were supposed to and they should pay it back. Even based on your personal exp…

It is not true that entire loan is forgiven if the payroll percent is met. Only the actual money spent on forgivable expenses (payroll + rent + interest on some debt) is forgivable. If you read the forgiveness application this is clear. Overall though I’d expect 75-95% of program funds to be forgiven as they have extended the time window from 8 to 24 weeks making it much easier to use all funds in a forgivable way.

>It is not true that entire loan is forgiven if the payroll percent is met.

Where did I say that?

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#289

Post by throwaway_USD » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

eric_b wrote: post #283

throwaway_USD wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know anyone who's had even a single dollar forgiven yet. This is what I meant by political couching: Do you know any one who has paid back a single dollar? >These are loans. Fine care to loan me $1M and I'll pay you back 20% with interest.

Loans always have delayed payment terms, you're being willfully obtuse.

>Loans always have delayed payment terms, you're being willfully obtuse

And how often do they have forgiveness terms?

Re: Searchable PPP Loan Data

#290

Post by bl4ckneon » Tue, Jul 07, 2020, 10:26 PM UTC

Something I find amusing is the amount of miss spellings for some bigger cities. San Francisco is spelled around 10 different ways. You think people would spell check the city they live in before asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more...