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Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

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Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually quite shocking how, when the primary idea is "dump money into the economy," giving the money to people instead of banks or firms is so controversial. It's more socialist and more capitalist, if you believe in that sort of thing.

I'm not saying you're wrong when I say consider the following: if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided to not work, then the next day they drive to the store and there is no one working... what do they do? Didn't you just cause a ton of inflation? At the end of the day, money doesn't solve problems. Work being done solves problems. How that should affect policy... I have no idea but I can see both s…

It would have to be A LOT of money for people to stop going to their jobs.

In a more realistic scenario: Maybe some people would quit their jobs because they gained some independence. Is that bad?

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1% loves pandemics.

...and all other forms of disaster capitalism

disaster capitalism

Taking egregious sums of state aid is crony capitalism and is market manipulation. And wherever you find egregious market manipulation, you'll almost always find government doing the steering.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually quite shocking how, when the primary idea is "dump money into the economy," giving the money to people instead of banks or firms is so controversial. It's more socialist and more capitalist, if you believe in that sort of thing.

I'm not saying you're wrong when I say consider the following: if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided to not work, then the next day they drive to the store and there is no one working... what do they do? Didn't you just cause a ton of inflation? At the end of the day, money doesn't solve problems. Work being done solves problems. How that should affect policy... I have no idea but I can see both s…

If you give everyone free money, why do you think people will stop working?

We justify giving money to rich people because it will make them work harder, but we fear that giving money to poor people will make them lazier.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#44
post #3

Directly via bailouts and indirectly via inflation, COVID was the biggest wealth transfer to the rich in history.

How does inflation help the rich? Doesn't that devalue their net worth?

The implication there is that equities are long term an adequate hedge against inflation.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#45

I'm surprised anyone is surprised. Here in the US we've spent several trillion dollars on Covid relief so far, and there's more to come. When you're dealing with a torrent of printed cash of this magnitude, there's of course going to be a lot of it that ends up in the wrong hands for the wrong reasons.

No one would be surprised if this was about the US, but it's that "euro" symbol that makes it surprising.

The difference between European and American corruption is that the former has an ally in a population that purposefully ignores evidence of the existence of any corruption because it would hurt the sense of national pride.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#46
post #3

Directly via bailouts and indirectly via inflation, COVID was the biggest wealth transfer to the rich in history.

How does inflation help the rich? Doesn't that devalue their net worth?

high inflation but not enough to trigger hyperinflation instead lead to quickly rising asset prices, like stocks, land, and so on.

Also rich people can sometimes take loans with interest lower than inflation, this is basically free money.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually quite shocking how, when the primary idea is "dump money into the economy," giving the money to people instead of banks or firms is so controversial. It's more socialist and more capitalist, if you believe in that sort of thing.

I'm not saying you're wrong when I say consider the following: if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided to not work, then the next day they drive to the store and there is no one working... what do they do? Didn't you just cause a ton of inflation? At the end of the day, money doesn't solve problems. Work being done solves problems. How that should affect policy... I have no idea but I can see both s…

>if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided to not work

It would be predicated on the amount wouldn't it?

Presumably 65M distributed equally among the people of the state wouldn't be enough for everyone to stop working.

One thing we can say without going into counterfactuals, the execs probably didn't work 28M harder, or produce 28M in value.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#48
post #40

The real error here is public money being given to private companies. Let them break Fund people, not companies

Imho, the main error is that they gave away the money unconditionally. The fact that the particular government didn't foresee this outcome is quite astonishing.

Given the huge bonuses bailed-out bankers got in 2008, it would be criminally naive to assume that politicians didn't plan on this happening.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#49

Same thing is happening here in the US. For example, Trump's law firm Kasowitz Benson Torres took a $10m forgivable government loan for COVID relief [1] despite earning a profit of over $2m per partner in the preceding years [2]. 1. https://pppwatch.com/loan/9581937109 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasowitz_Benson_Torres

Blame the lawmakers who wrote and voted on the laws and rules.

Re: Booking.com gives €28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took €65m in State aid

#50

Stop using marketplaces and book directly, these companies have no risks and take 16% to 30% commissions. If consumers start booking directly, recovery from the pandemic will be much faster.

Some perspective from someone who has worked in hospitality: Some brands have fought back in creative ways.

An essential part of being listed on Booking or Expedia is to agree to never advertise lower prices anywhere else, including your own website. That means you can share a $100/night rate on your own brand's site (with no commission) and you can't tell Booking or Expedia to show rates over $100. Thus, users have no advantage in going to a hotel's own site, which only shows their own brand's hotels. Expedia/Booking on the other hand show you all the hotels in the area and you can be confident in price-shopping (the one exception is loyalty points, but if you're a price-conscious, non brand-loyal customer, that won't matter to you). Worse, competing hotels can get better visibility by sharing even lower rates and promotions on these aggregators, and it becomes a race to the bottom, really hurting hotels long-term just for visibility.

Choice Hotels had an interesting response a couple years ago: they show a "member-only rate" on their website. In the above scenario, technically, their public rate is $100 so Booking would take around $20 leaving $80 for the hotel. But Choice might also show $93 as an option on their website only for members (which is free to join, only takes an email/password). This way, technically their members-only rate isn't being advertised for just anyone so they don't run afoul of their Booking/Expedia agreements while only losing $7 as opposed to $20.

Last I checked, Booking and Expedia didn't like this and they docked Choice Hotel visibility in their searches because even if it didn't run afoul of the agreement, they still have discretion over their search ranking.

These aggregators don't need to disappear. They just need to lose some of their leverage over hotels. If all hotel brands banded together to offer their own "members-only" rate and customers became aware of what's happening, I'm sure it would really help out hotels long term.

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