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America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

economist.com

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Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#351

Post by ejb999 »

I used to listen to a podcast I enjoyed about a small and rapidly growing tech company in Oregon, someone I had personally met a few years back at a conference - which is where I first learned of the company; they work in the e-commerce space and I enjoyed listening to the founder talk about the trials and tribulations of growing his company; when covid hit, the company grew like gangbusters (like just abut every online business), and he would talk about the skyrocketing business growth and all of the money they were making.

Then he also went on to talk about how he was lining up at the public trough to get welfare from the government (PPP) to 'help' his business - was so thoroughly disgusted by the lack of ethics and have never listen to the show again, and lost all respect for this founder as well.

I will never understand rich people making money hand-over-fist and still willing to take money from taxpayers who make a fraction of what they do so they can have even more

(are you listening Elon? this story is not about you, but it could be.)

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#352

Post by alistairSH »

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #276
wyager wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In hindsight, the government shouldn't have precipitated the conditions that justified these "loans" in the first place. The whole putative point of this (reducing covid deaths) was obviously ineffective and/or a red herring. Of course, if you think the actual point was liquidation of Kulaks, it was quite effective at that.

> The whole putative point of this (reducing covid deaths) was obviously ineffective Yesterday's conspiracy theory is tomorrow's news[1] [1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-h...

Talk about click-bait titles!

Look at their definition of lockdown. It includes all forms of non-pharmaceutical intervention. This includes border closures, shelter in place, and everything else that was tried in one big “lockdown” category.

The same study found that limiting indoor public meetings (bars, etc) WAS effective. But, thats just a subset of “lockdowns”.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#353

Post by AlchemistCamp »

ejb999 wrote: post #351

I used to listen to a podcast I enjoyed about a small and rapidly growing tech company in Oregon, someone I had personally met a few years back at a conference - which is where I first learned of the company; they work in the e-commerce space and I enjoyed listening to the founder talk about the trials and tribulations of growing his company; when covid hit, the company grew like gangbusters (like just abut every onl…

Related: https://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-493-...

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#354

Post by codeivore »

jdminhbg wrote: post #53
wnevets wrote: post #45

And no one was worried about "socialism" when the tax payers gave tons of cash to the rich. Certain people only seem to worry about "socialism" when it helps regular people.

> no one This is an article in the Economist decrying it, so I don't think you can claim that no one is worried.

yeah, an article in a publication where the authors are anonymous because the views published in it are painfully true enough to make you real life enemies

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#355

Post by sumedh »

jsmeaton wrote: post #294

> Crafting a targeted policy would have been hard, expensive and slow. How about simply stating that any firm paying dividends to shareholders or bonuses to execs could not have the loan forgiven? It wouldn't be perfect but it'd cut out the most egregious snakes. Hindsight yadda yadda. The same thing happened in Australia. Cash to businesses who could show an impact by Covid, but a lot of that money went towards bonu…

> How about simply stating that any firm paying dividends

The people who write these laws know they can add such clauses but they wont because who is going to complain about it. Most people dont care.

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#357

Post by hnbad »

rory wrote: post #60

I know a few upper-middle class small business owners (all non-retail sectors) whose businesses weren't substantially affected by the pandemic, but who basically got a free handout as part of the program. Two mentioned how they were initially hesitant to apply for money, but then worried that if they didn't, their business could take a downturn after it was too late. Then as long as they spent the money on payroll (w…

For a counter example: in Germany business subsidies for COVID excluded payroll, which for many service businesses meant it wasn't worth applying. The idea was that payroll expenses could already be reduced by sending people home using the short-time work subsidies, which goes something like this: you reduce an employee's hours by X% and the government pays the business XY% of the employee's salary.

In practice this meant small, founder-led service companies were hit harder because working business owners couldn't take advantage of this and cutting hours also meant not being able to invest as much time in rebuilding or pivoting. Additionally the subsidies also barely covered stocking expenses (e.g. for losses from perishable goods expiring during lockdowns) so the only type of business that really benefited were medium scale companies with enough financial reserves to survive sending every employee home while the subsidies would cover a large chunk of recurring business expenses, i.e. mostly manufacturing companies.

There were also some additional subsidies but they used almost surgical precision to similarly limit who could apply, e.g. solo entrepreneurs without employees (but again, not covering payroll) or companies that had more than X% of employees working at least Y% short-time while also having at least one employee out of short-time mentoring someone in a job training, or a tax rebate for companies paying out "COVID bonuses" to employees (which in practice just translates to giving tax subsidies to large companies paying out bonuses to senior executives in the middle of a pandemic).

Re: America’s Covid job-saving programme gave most of its cash to the rich

#360

Post by yobbo »

nosianu wrote: post #340
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The whole putative point of this (reducing covid deaths) was obviously ineffective Yesterday's conspiracy theory is tomorrow's news[1] [1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/jan/31/lockdowns-h...

AFAIK the main purpose first and foremost was to prevent the health system from collapsing. Everything else was secondary. Take the spike out of the incidence rate to spread hospital admissions out over time. It would not affect how many got infected, not even deaths directly - the only way to reduce deaths would be if in the meantime better treatments could be developed, more people getting vaccinated, and enough ho…

> AFAIK the main purpose first and foremost was to prevent the health system from collapsing.

You're arguing against the wording of the title, but the overall conclusion is clear - that lockdowns (in the common use of the word) did not have the effects that were used to justify them.

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