[thephyber]

More accurately, it was to preserve employment relationships.

Historically, once mass layoffs happen, they are contagious. Once unemployment rates rise, companies plan to cut costs to ride out a recession.

Also, once employees are unemployed for an extended period of time (something like 9+ months), their odds of finding similarly paying work drop permanently.

It was in everybody’s best interest to reduce the employer-employee churn.

[mattmaroon]

Absolutely. The weird strain of Marxism running through our country these days sort of imagines a bunch of politicians sitting around going "ok, we have to keep the fat cats fat so they keep giving us illegal stock tips we can abuse for our own profit". And not that that never happens, but it seems like in the middle of the depths of the Covid pandemic, they just wanted to not add economic depression to the list of problems we had.

And sure, the when the government transfers large amounts of money it's like moving water with a leaky bucket and in this case maybe a colander, but I'd rather be sitting here 5 years later complaining about fraud than a depression.