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I think it'd be the opposite reaction if the US adopted the NZ strategy. People would be outraged that the money is going to companies, especially large corpora

I think it'd be the opposite reaction if the US adopted the NZ strategy. People would be outraged that the money is going to companies, especially large corporations where most people work. Someone would come up with the statistic that 80% of the money went to the richest 100 companies in the US or something.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
That would be true if corporations were just given money. But as I understand it, that's not what NZ did. The US actually did a fairly smart thing with the initial aid package - corporations got loans that were forgiven if used to pay wages. The problem was that we (the government) didn't do anything to establish whether a company actually needed help with this. I wonder why that happened ....
- tstrimple 6y ago
  It will forever be a mystery as to why there was so much corruption surrounding the Covid business loans and payments. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-06-16/hiltzik-collapse-of-coronavirus-bailout-oversight https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-06-16/hiltzik-co...
- asciident 6y ago
  There was also a ton of fraud (some estimates were 1/3 of the money went to scammers and foreign people). They didn't have a good way to check if a business was an actual business or not. This resulted in entire neighborhoods of people getting 10K each by sharing the scam [2]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-24/small-business-administration-sba-loan-fraud-payouts-show-magnitude-of-issue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-24/small-bus... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-business-administration-10-000-grant-fraud-went-viral-hurting-program https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-bus...
  - imtringued 6y ago
    What's the demographic of the scammers? Are they immoral rich people who don't need the money and just love the idea of scamming the government? Are they poor people desperate enough to steal from the government? If the latter then the stimulus was actually quite well spent.
    - asciident 6y ago
      A lot of the money went to gangs in foreign countries. There were some stories of immoral rich people like the rapper who got over a million dollars and boasted about it, but I imagine most were dishonest poor people. The problem is this rewards a small pool of scammers, and the honest poor are left even further behind. But it sounds like you want to believe it was money well spent, so I don't imagine this would convince you otherwise.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

That would be true if corporations were just given money. But as I understand it, that's not what NZ did. The US actually did a fairly smart thing with the initial aid package - corporations got loans that were forgiven if used to pay wages. The problem was that we (the government) didn't do anything to establish whether a company actually needed help with this. I wonder why that happened ....

tstrimple 6y ago
It will forever be a mystery as to why there was so much corruption surrounding the Covid business loans and payments. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-06-16/hiltzik-collapse-of-coronavirus-bailout-oversight https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-06-16/hiltzik-co...
asciident 6y ago
There was also a ton of fraud (some estimates were 1/3 of the money went to scammers and foreign people). They didn't have a good way to check if a business was an actual business or not. This resulted in entire neighborhoods of people getting 10K each by sharing the scam [2]. [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-24/small-business-administration-sba-loan-fraud-payouts-show-magnitude-of-issue https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-12-24/small-bus... [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-business-administration-10-000-grant-fraud-went-viral-hurting-program https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-10-29/small-bus...
- imtringued 6y ago
  What's the demographic of the scammers? Are they immoral rich people who don't need the money and just love the idea of scamming the government? Are they poor people desperate enough to steal from the government? If the latter then the stimulus was actually quite well spent.
  - asciident 6y ago
    A lot of the money went to gangs in foreign countries. There were some stories of immoral rich people like the rapper who got over a million dollars and boasted about it, but I imagine most were dishonest poor people. The problem is this rewards a small pool of scammers, and the honest poor are left even further behind. But it sounds like you want to believe it was money well spent, so I don't imagine this would convince you otherwise.