To the extent Europe has avoided American-style mass layoffs, it's been through direct and indirect government funding of continued employment. Businesses and e

To the extent Europe has avoided American-style mass layoffs, it's been through direct and indirect government funding of continued employment. Businesses and employees are being kept warm — they're in the cache. In the US, this is anathema to the ruling party, so even trillion-dollar nominal relief legislation is structured to channel money with little oversight primarily to corporations, and erect preferential barriers to relief reaching states, local governments, and citizens' pockets. There is more concern in the US ruling party over the "moral hazard" of a fast-food worker in a big city on the edge of poverty receiving unemployment that exceeds their $8 per hour salary, than there is over shell companies thrown together in a week receiving $55M no-bid contracts to resell PPE seized by the federal government from the states [1]. [1] See Blue Flame Medical, Oren-Pines, Panthera, et al.