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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

#211

Post by necovek »

nradov wrote: post #196
asdff wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When did you stop paying taxes? 300 B.C.?

The key word there is "perpetually". In the US welfare payments and other social support programs are usually time limited for recipients who aren't disabled. I have no problem with government supports for people who actually work but still can't afford basic necessities. Just don't ask me to pay for non-disabled people to sit around all day.

You are always doing that through all sorts of both minor ("she's my uncle's friend") and major corruption ("they donated to our campaign, let's give them a contract where they simply take a cut on the deal with the provider"): a lot of people are "employed" but only "sit around all day".

If you want to fix that, you should be going into politics or law and law enforcement.

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

#212

Post by Sharlin »

clusterfish wrote: post #190
hervature wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much food and what quality? Do I get to ask for tomahawk steaks every meal and an extra one to bring home to my dog? Is everyone entitled to an avocado or just those that live close to an avocado farm? There is no easy answer to this and you bet a government mandated system would be heavily lobbied to include/exclude certain things. For housing, do you get to decide where you live? Or does the government set up a…

> How much food and what quality? Food stamps make this back into a "how much money" question without getting into execs pockets.

Food stamps are degrading and paternalistic, though, by design. Their whole point is "we won't give you real money because we don't trust you to not misuse it."

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

#213

Post by e17 »

dalbasal wrote: post #18
TheRealPomax wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Is it? European/Dutch & US rhetoric can be quite different... but the actual policies are not, at least not in a sense relevant to this issue. In fact, the US cut people a bigger piece of the covid relief money than did most european countries.

The US has even sent like $3k straight into the accounts of every citizen over the course of the pandemic! As far as I'm aware no other major country has done helicopter money like thia

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

#214

Post by donmcronald »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #139
krono wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is exactly what was done here in the Netherlands. Booking.com just decided to exploit and, in my opinion, abuse that system. Edit: These emergency financial support measures I was referring to are: - "Temporary emergency scheme for job retention" (NOW) - "Temporary self-employment income support and loan scheme" (TOZO) - "Reimbursement Fixed Costs" (TVL) More info (in English) on gov websites: - https://www.gove…

NOW appears to pay businesses up-front for, in turn, continuing to pay employees: https://business.gov.nl/subsidy/corona-crisis-temporary-emer... Arguably, it would've been a much better system if the Netherlands just... paid people directly regardless of who they worked for at the time, so employers didn't need to worry about paying employees while they couldn't do normal business.

I think it was similar in Canada. Everyone here that got laid off was eligible for government money though, so I think it would have been better to forgo the wage subsidies for businesses. A lot of them pocketed that money.

Instead they should have let businesses lay off staff without feeling guilty because there was a safety net for those people and once a business laid off X% of their staff they could have been eligible for extra government help.

That way the government wouldn't have ended up paying the wages of people that were needed to meet demand (and make profit for) the businesses that weren't really impacted.

For example, local restaurants got crushed and could easily justify laying off 50%+ of their staff. Give them more money IMO. However, the delivery business down the street with +50% demand shouldn't be getting a nickel.

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

#215

Post by ipaddr »

jachee wrote: post #137
ipaddr wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You force them to close if you want them to come back you have to keep them alive.

Keeping the humans alive should be sufficient.

You realize humans need jobs to come back to and humans need places to buy things and services.

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

#216

Post by bilbo0s »

quickthrowman wrote: post #195
__turbobrew__ wrote: post #151

Covid has got me thinking about the government’s role in social welfare. Providing social welfare through money allows for people to misallocate the money or skim off the top of the money. For the vast majority of people their covid stimulation money did not go into their pockets, it went to their landlord or their mortgage holder resulting in a massive wealth transfer from public funds to banks and those who own lan…

A lot of PPP loans in my industry were passed through to the owners as dividends/profit taking, as they didn’t actually need the loans since we were all busy. Small/medium business owners in slightly affected industries got RICH last year.

Small/medium business owners in slightly affected industries got RICH last year.

Not to be that guy, but what if that was the real idea behind giving the loans? I have to confess that living in Wisconsin has left me jaded with respect to our leadership. The whole Foxconn experience still informs the way i look at new proposals from our leadership. It's become very difficult for me to believe that some of these politicians aren't fully aware of what they are doing and who they will be benefiting prior to taking the actions they champion.

They hold the poor hostage to their greed and the greed of their cronies. "Let me and my cronies take XX dollars or we won't give out a dime to those families that just got laid off." It's sickening.

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

#217

Post by polynomial »

Egidius wrote: post #11
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.

While booking in fact got rid of 25% of their workforce

this is kind of amazing given it appears terms of the aid were literally not to do this. and yet smh

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

#218

Post by [deleted] »

maxsilver wrote: post #81
MangoCoffee wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Fund people, not companies it depended. large corporation like Apple don't need the money but mom and pop shop that is forced to close during the peak should receive money. the sad thing is corporation that clearly can make it thur covid is receiving the largest amount like https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...

>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…

[deleted]

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

#219

Post by tasssko »

lotux wrote: post #96
mminer237 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

yes, most rich people can get good loans with low rate during this time, as inflation goes up, the value of asset that they bought with loan goes up and debt value goes down, so the get richer twice again that is why for example bill gates became biggest land owner during covid, I guess he bought lots of land with cheap loans

Bill Gates has a team of people in a ‘family office’ managing his money the reality he probably had a windfall last year and needed to do something with it. Usually when you have a windfall you buy treasuries because they can be liquidated easily when new opportunities are available. Buying treasuries is a bad idea at the moment, they have negative yields when you factor in inflation. He probably had no good stock opportunities and there may have been more opportunities in farm land. Would he have used a loan… maybe I don’t know the details but also maybe not his investment funds don’t need the loans. My point is he has a good team managing his wealth and it will most certainly grow as a result and this team will also find good opportunities for him to grow his wealth. This should not be surprising.

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

#220

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

Sharlin wrote: post #212
clusterfish wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much food and what quality? Food stamps make this back into a "how much money" question without getting into execs pockets.

Food stamps are degrading and paternalistic, though, by design. Their whole point is "we won't give you real money because we don't trust you to not misuse it."

Eh, there is a reason for this mistrust along with the limits on what you can buy with them in US. My wife used to work in Jewel and she has no end of stories about people and snap cards. Maybe they are paternalistic, because, well, you can't take care of yourself and your family. Little help is needed.
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