[therealdrag0]

The posts article says,

> European countries did better: governments encouraged struggling employers to keep workers on their payrolls with reduced hours, and then made up some or all of the pay gap. Unlike the ppp, such programmes were usually aimed only at struggling firms that needed to cut salaries (though they were not always well targeted: a share of beneficiaries in Britain continued to pay dividends). Yet despite the flaws in America’s programme, the study’s authors argue that Congress was incapable of doing better. Crafting a targeted policy would have been hard, expensive and slow. Many countries that kept workers in jobs had programmes in place already: some of the most successful—including France, Japan and Germany—simply increased coverage and benefits at the onset of the pandemic. If America hopes to waste less money in future crises, it should plan ahead.

[kortilla]

How is that better though? They punished companies that were doing well going in. The end result could easily be worse for the whole economy.