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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

#121

Post by oblio »

tracer4201 wrote: post #108
mdorazio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are we saying a rent payment is a “transfer of wealth”? I’m not invested in real estate, but I imagine many people in real estate were just as impacted. Don’t you likely need to pay towards a mortgage and put some aside for capital and day to day maintenance? Your comment is written as if a rent payment is a transfer from one person to directly to someone else’s savings account. I’m not convinced this is true.

I think he's saying that at a certain level of wealth, you don't need mortgages anymore. And especially with super low interest rates - bonus points if the interest rate is fixed - mortgages are more of an investment than a liability.

So people with a ton of money can just buy a lot of property which they then rent out. Renovation work can be delayed and property values have only went up in the past 30 years or so (minus the financial crisis, which in the greater scheme of things turned out to be just a blip). So they have an ever appreciating asset that's a constant stream of revenue. Double-win.

Which makes this whole multiple-bankruptcy thing for the former US president even the more baffling :-))

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

#122

Post by fastball »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #90
ralph84 wrote: post #3

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

>via inflation The poor tend to be net borrowers. The rich tend to be net lenders. Inflation makes the poor less in debt by lowering the real value of payback. Inflation helps borrowers.

Not sure this is true. A wealthy person might have a mortgage on a $1M home while the poor are more likely to be renting.

To whit, US mortgage debt in 2020 was at $10T while the debt that the poor are more likely to have (Credit Card / Personal Loan / Auto Loan) is a combined $2.5T[1].

The wealthy are often highly leveraged in a variety of ways. Just look at some of the world's richest people – they generally fund themselves through loans taken out against their equity holdings (stocks in the case of Bezos / Musk / etc).

So the ultra-wealthy like Musk are actually winning twice: once when everyone rushes to buy stocks like Tesla because they're worried about inflation and such, increasing the value of his holdings substantially. Then again when the inflation actually hits, because he is funding himself with loans, which are now easier to repay.

[1] https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/research/consume...

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

#123

Post by [deleted] »

oneplane wrote: post #8
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #4

The article is thin on details. Does the 65 million Euros of state aid need to be repaid? Or was it free money from the government with no expectation of repayment?

It was a deal where companies wouldn't discard the workforce in exchange for money. It didn't come with a ban on bonuses, but it did come with a bunch of middle-aged white men frowning at different middle-aged white men for not pausing the bonus culture.

[deleted]

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

#124

Post by bredren »

tracer4201 wrote: post #108
mdorazio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are we saying a rent payment is a “transfer of wealth”? I’m not invested in real estate, but I imagine many people in real estate were just as impacted. Don’t you likely need to pay towards a mortgage and put some aside for capital and day to day maintenance? Your comment is written as if a rent payment is a transfer from one person to directly to someone else’s savings account. I’m not convinced this is true.

The great recession resulted in the creation of Blackstone's Invitation Homes, which is the largest owner of single-family rental homes in the US.

Homes that used to be owned and rented locally by individuals or small businesses are now rented and managed from elsewhere.

Profits resulting from higher rents and cheaper maintenance flow to stock holders, creating bad incentives. These homes are no longer rotating into the market for sale, reducing inventory.

Even for rental homes rented by local owners, the increased rent due to the commercialization of rented residential housing created conditions for everyone's rent to go up.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-street-land...

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

#125

Post by elliekelly »

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.

Captain Government may be at the helm, but they’re serving is at the pleasure of those contributing to their next campaign fund. If the Yacht owners want to go to Tahiti where do you think a Yacht captain is most likely to steer the ship?

It’s a cause and a symptom of “crony capitalism” — a feedback loop that perpetuates and exacerbates existing inequality.

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

#126

Post by oneplane »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #15
oneplane wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was a deal where companies wouldn't discard the workforce in exchange for money. It didn't come with a ban on bonuses, but it did come with a bunch of middle-aged white men frowning at different middle-aged white men for not pausing the bonus culture.

What does age/race/gender have to do with this?

It is a caricature, but also happens to match the people involved, which ironically reinforces the caricature. One might even call it a trope.

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

#127

Post by varispeed »

There needs to be done something about situations where companies pay minimum wage and at the same time register millions or billions in profits (and then making artificial loss while moving money offshore).

It's controversial, but I think minimum wage should be directly tied to a given company revenue.

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

#128

Post by adamrezich »

ralph84 wrote: post #3

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

watch out, go any further down that train of thought and you'll be a "conspiracy theorist"

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

#129

Post by Spivak »

mdorazio wrote: post #73
slowhand09 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not what anyone means when they talk about wealth transfers. Yes rent is a huge issue on its own eat the new feudal lords and all that but the problem of people using their wages and salaries funded by taxpayers to pay for things they we're paying for already is something totally different than inflation devaluing dollars, which is the primary asset held by low-middle income people, plus wholesale transfering it via bailouts to the already wealthy.

If the gov't took money from taxpayers to give to companies to pay worker salaries to pay rent and you squint a bit that's just workers paying rent semi-collectively which on a macro scale is like... fine. Not good. But fine.

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

#130

Post by jiofih »

tracer4201 wrote: post #108
mdorazio wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are we saying a rent payment is a “transfer of wealth”? I’m not invested in real estate, but I imagine many people in real estate were just as impacted. Don’t you likely need to pay towards a mortgage and put some aside for capital and day to day maintenance? Your comment is written as if a rent payment is a transfer from one person to directly to someone else’s savings account. I’m not convinced this is true.

Not at all. Their equity remains the same, and chances are you can stay solvent for a couple years if you own a second property. It just means they get to earn 1/30 less rent (in its original meaning) over the whole mortgage.
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