[colonelanguz]

This was incredibly frustrating to read because, intentionally or not, it perpetuates and normalizes the actual moral hazard of this crisis. It conflates the correct notion that if the government is forcing people not to work, it should make sure they don't starve to death, with the false notion that, in a capitalist society, businesses who were so balance sheet reckless that they couldn't last a month without government loans ought to be bailed out simply because it's "not their fault" that an economic crisis exposed their irresponsible planning.

That's not how capitalism works; the weakest companies should be allowed to fail. The government can still lend to keep their workers alive, but what it's really doing in this crisis is keeping their stock price alive, which overwhelmingly benefits corporate insiders and rich people who own stocks. That's the opposite of how the corporate form is supposed to work—equityholders get all of the upside on a sunny day, so they're entitled to ZERO protection on a rainy day. It's risky to buy stock. Buy bonds if you don't want to shoulder risk.

The most frustrating thing to me is that the same companies who are asking for buyouts could have simply held excess cash, or raised their employees' wages, or invested in profitable assets—all things you expect companies to do under capitalism! But instead, they invested in stock buybacks, which means literally spending retained earnings on inflating their own stock price. Apple is a classic example: earnings has actually been flat since like 2015, but earnings per share has gone up because Apple has bought back $250B of its own stock in the last eight years or so. But at least Apple is solvent! The airlines, for example, are asking for a bailout in almost exactly the same amount that they have spent on stock buybacks in the last several years. It frustrates.

[macintux]

I don’t think the problem is “a month” of inactivity, although clearly there are no shortage of people and businesses who can’t survive even that.

The real problem is that we’re a month in and there’s no genuine end in sight, optimistic politicians notwithstanding. The actual end of the crisis could be two months away or two years.

[colonelanguz]

That's a fair point. It doesn't make me feel any differently about the proposition that, in a society that preaches values like rugged individualism and fiscal responsibility to its poorest members, it's strange to me that 99% of the government's per capita expenditures are going to places other than the people. Literally 99%. And by blindly subsidizing every single business, including like hedge funds and other speculators who partially caused the liquidity crisis, the government in sowing the seeds for the next meltdown and disguising insolvent firms as economically viable ones. All of which is bad for society and the economy.

[macintux]

Yeah, I've definitely been in the UBI camp for a while, and I'm hopeful that if nothing else positive comes out of this that we'll rethink how we're structured as a society in that regard.

So it's safe to say I think more of the money should be going directly to the most vulnerable, but I'm also sympathetic to the point that, at least as far as the way we've structured our economy, public companies aren't allowed to prepare for a 100% loss of business for months at a time. How much grief did Apple get for sitting on a pile of cash when it could be "better spent elsewhere"?