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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

#141

Post by trhway »

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.

>Wife's company got COVID loans. They were forgiven.

those relatively useful (at least in the cases where it wasn't abused/cheated) programs is a minor part and basically a window dressing of that multi trillion transfer of wealth to the rich. It is just a bone thrown to the populace to detract the attention and to derail the public discourse they way you just did.

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

#142

Post by eecc »

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?

No because it just increases the price of stocks and real estate, while maintaining their value, while your cash deposit stays the same.

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

#143

Post by ghostwriter »

y04nn wrote: post #19
savant_penguin wrote: post #7

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

I have to agree, if I want to start a competing reservation platform I would take this "opportunity" to launch it, but because big corps (almost a monopoly for booking.com) are helped in difficult times this makes it almost impossible to have competition or new small players that would have been advantaged by not having the weight of the big players.

if you gather a group of people with financial independence, and try to bootstrap and never sell a new reservation platform, you can make it happen in about a decade. The trick is to never bloat budgets and staff, and to stay away from KPI - your goal is to take over regions by dumping prices and providing near-zero commissions on bookings from your platform for as many hotels as you can handle. You can handle this strategy among a team of financially independent members who are interested in the field rather than quick buck. It's hardly possible if you're seeking VC money.

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

#144

Post by akomtu »

inter_netuser wrote: post #21
ralph84 wrote: post #3

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

1% loves pandemics.

I remember it was mentioned in the gervais principle book: when an organization approaches its final stage, the top brass collects anything of value and jumps the ship, leaving the clueless staff. These recessions are a lot like this value extraction phase.

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

#145

Post by donmcronald »

wskinner wrote: post #109
mminer237 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

New money does not reach all people at the same time. Those who get it first benefit more. This is known as the Cantillon Effect. https://fee.org/articles/the-cantillon-effect-because-of-inf...

Yep. Basically whoever gets the free money first get to buy / invest before anyone else even realizes the money supply has been diluted.

The way money is printed and given directly to the rich via the financial industry needs to stop. If the money supply needs to be increased every year it should be done by giving it directly to the masses via UBI or similar.

I'm starting to have the opinion we've been getting scammed with hidden inflation since the 80s.

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

#146

Post by treeman79 »

Karunamon wrote: post #118
aeturnum wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That always struck me as an ass-backwards way of looking at taxes. $100 saved by someone near the poverty line is a big deal to them, $100 saved by someone making six figures is not near as much. The recent doubling of the standard deduction is probably one of the biggest (in terms of impact) tax cuts to the lower/middle earners (read: the vast majority of people) in a long time.

Low earners don’t pay federal income tax. Bottom 50% make up 3% Top 1% paid 40% of taxes.

https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-income...

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

#147

Post by pwillia7 »

tracer4201 wrote: post #114
maxsilver wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>mom and pop shop that is forced to close during the peak should receive money. No, they shouldn't. Don't give any money to any corporations, give all the money exclusively to people. If Mom and Pop run a business, they can get cash as humans to float their business, just like any human could. They could temporarily lay off all their staff (which is OK, because their staff are humans, and are also getting cash) There…

I want to convince you this isn’t a good idea. If all the businesses shut down in my town or city, what happens after? Where do I find work? Especially if I don’t have sufficient capital to start a new business (never mind the skills or training), what will I do then? How does society go back to normal? Do we stop all output and just have the government mail checks to every individual forever? That’s not going to wor…

just keep giving everyone more money Duh!

/s

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

#148

Post by comboy »

derefr wrote: post #138
comboy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit more complex, but even avoiding how much value pleople get from paying their rent, only as much was transferred as there would be empty vacancies from people relocating elsewhere (or losing their homes and having nowhere to go). If elsewhere, they also pay rent to somebody. Plus somebody else would pay the rent when they are gone, just slightly lower (probably). That difference in rent price would be amoun…

I think the idea isn’t that it was a net transfer from individual working-class people to the capital class, but rather a net transfer from city/state/country treasuries to the capital class. How much of that translates to the rich getting richer, depends on what proportion of those treasuries’ funds originally came from taxes on the rich, vs. taxes on everyone else.

The way I see it, they state money belongs to everyone (bear with me), the transfer between working and capital class happens when it is not distributed evenly, which is what happened at booking.com and is happening quite often because those who work don't have time to research new regulations, don't have experts to analyze them and some yet other people to fill out necessary documents to get money from the state.

That's why I believe many laws like "let's help THOSE people in need" end up on a giant pile that's mostly getting abused by those who have time for it (of course there are exceptions).

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

#149

Post by ska »

ErikVandeWater wrote: post #13

It's interesting the CFO got more than 3x the CEO, and more than 2x CEO + VP. Does anyone know the reasoning behind that? It seems a bit shady to me in general for a CFO to be paid large performance bonuses.

For the most part, C level comp of this type is defined ahead of time with the board, and based on formulas/targets that are often tied pretty closely to job function. Given that; it's not a big stretch to see how income like this ("for nothing") might factor into CFO far more than the others.

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

#150

Post by andrepd »

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.

>government is doing the steering

That under capitalism those who accumulate massive amounts of wealth can use that wealth to “buy” the state institutions to do their bidding, is precisely (one of the) problems in capitalism.

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