[aaomidi]

Why are we prioritizing businesses before individuals?

Maybe our old system was inefficient and these dying companies should be left to die?

We can't say the same about people. Who are in fact in trouble, and a dying person is far more morally reprehensible than a company having to shut down.

[cameronbrown]

Businesses are people. They're just groups of people selling shit to other people, who likely do the same. Consumers are leaf nodes in this graph, so every business that dies due to lack of consumer demand could mean a dozen more are going to fall as a result.

Businesses failing == people poorer

[MisterBastahrd]

No they are not. Businesses are legal entities which have different standards of liabilities than people. The way to support businesses is not to make sure that the government hands them a wad of cash, but by handing a smaller wad of cash to individuals so that they can continue to fund businesses directly through the market. This has the benefit of also keeping corporate taxes flowing to federal coffers.

[AnimalMuppet]

If the people have money, but the company can't sell to them, what good does that do for the company?

And if the people want to buy from the company, but the company goes bankrupt before the people are allowed to buy, then giving money to the people didn't help the people (at least not with respect to this problem).

[asdff]

What good is giving money to a company that can't contribute to the economy? That's feeding a parasite. 70% of this economy is driven by consumer spending at the bottom, not by companies like Boeing covering their poor financial decisions. Giving a company like boeing money is fundamentally unproductive compared to giving it to the people, who would reinvest it into the most productive and critical aspects of the economy, not just who commands favorable defense contracts or golfs at Mar a Lago.

[cameronbrown]

Boeing is affected by consumer spending just as much as every company in existence.

> reinvest it into the most productive and critical aspects of the economy

How? People, really, really, really, want to go out and spend money right now, but it's impossible because everything is shut.

[asdff]

What do you mean? Everything is available online and can be delivered to your door. About the only thing I don't have access to is little boutique shops. I can even get weed delivered via app.

That being said, I don't think anyone is looking to spend money with unemployment at 20%. People are using their stimulus checks to pay down debt and buy diapers. Belts are being tightened. Rent is not being paid. None of this is a recipe for consumer spending without a sustained injection of cash. $1200 buys three weeks rent in a 1 bedroom apartment in LA county.