Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

nltimes.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 346 posts

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

#71

Post by ep103 »

trentnix wrote: post #42
thinkmassive wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

disaster capitalism is a term coined by Amy Goodman to describe the efforts of the most politically influential to steer the economy towards regular crises, and then take advantage of those crises via crony capitalism

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

#72

Post by deathcalibur »

toxik wrote: post #41
deathcalibur wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The problem isn't really people quitting actually because like you said, that could be good. It's more like the business can't pay to stay open because there aren't enough customers to cover the variable costs. So now the business is closed and you have no where to spend your money... This realistically only affects small businesses like your local grocery store or whatever. Once the pandemic lifts, all that cheap property gets bought up by the Walmarts of the world and the concentration of power to the top 1% continues.

Right? I could totally be wrong here.

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

#73

Post by mdorazio »

slowhand09 wrote: post #67
ralph84 wrote: post #3

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

Not rich here. Wife's company got COVID loans. They were forgiven. Company had to prove money was spent on rent, salaries, benefits. Company didn't make money on it. Employees were able to keep their jobs. No bonuses involved there.

Yes, and what did those employees who would have otherwise been unemployed spend their money on? Likely rent was the #1 item, thus transferring wealth from tax dollars to asset holders.

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

#74

Post by gltchkrft »

hugoromano wrote: post #12

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.

Maybe they should fix their websites and refund / cancellation policies. No one would mind booking directly from a hotel website if they offered the same price, convenience and guarantees that booking does.

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

#75

Post by wavefunction »

amelius wrote: post #40
savant_penguin wrote: post #7

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.

There is a reason the Republican politicians in Congress voted to strip the measures of even normal oversight.

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

#76

Post by garmaine »

slowhand09 wrote: post #67
ralph84 wrote: post #3

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

Not rich here. Wife's company got COVID loans. They were forgiven. Company had to prove money was spent on rent, salaries, benefits. Company didn't make money on it. Employees were able to keep their jobs. No bonuses involved there.

What did they do with the regular income they had during that period that would have gone to rent, salaries, etc.?

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

#77

Post by garmaine »

mminer237 wrote: post #27
ralph84 wrote: 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?

Inflation is regressive. The rich don’t literally hoard cash, and their investments are likely to appreciate, or at least not suffer as badly as real inflation.

Have you seen how much the stock market went up in the last year?

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

#78

Post by ska »

It's going to be interesting to see analysis of various "covid response" policies in terms of their intended vs. actual consequence.

I'm guessing that countries that tied corporate money to payroll somehow are going to see better impacts than those that didn't.

There's also a lot of weird incentives and corner cases. Especially in countries where states/provinces/whatever have a lot of autonomy, there is a ton of variation too.

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

#79

Post by aeturnum »

slowhand09 wrote: post #67
ralph84 wrote: post #3

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

Not rich here. Wife's company got COVID loans. They were forgiven. Company had to prove money was spent on rent, salaries, benefits. Company didn't make money on it. Employees were able to keep their jobs. No bonuses involved there.

The COVID relief has helped the rich in the same way that the mortgage tax deduction 'mostly' helps the rich[1]: the majority of the dollars go to aid wealthy people, despite the number of non-wealthy beneficiaries being much higher.

[1] https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/358922-mortgage-interest...

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

#80

Post by deathcalibur »

zetsurin wrote: post #47
deathcalibur wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Oh I totally agree in this particular instance nothing good came from this "bailout". I'm merely trying to say I understand why small businesses need bailouts in addition to their employees.
Post reply on HN