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A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans. https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachelor-alu

A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans. https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachelor-alums-got-20k-ppp-loans/ https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel... These covid programs were certainly a massive handout to the unscrupulous. I feel sorry for those who worked hard and lived frugally, just to get steamrolled by the government money printer. And look how reluctant the Fed and Fiscal were to reign in any of the madness. 0 moves until 8% CPI. Can't have housing appreciate at 10% instead of 20%, or stocks at 10 instead of 30 now, can we? Never seen a class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children

usrn 4y ago
Chances are they don't have children.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Beyond your own children, lawmakers should care about making policy that benefits the future of society. Perhaps too altruistic for some. But now that inflation is here and consumer sentiment is close to all time lows, the jig is up.
newbamboo 4y ago
“class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children” Agreed. Very Ugolino.
ourmandave 4y ago
There's been a lot of U.S. gov bailouts before covid. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/governmen... The next one looks like student loans which totals $1.61T nation wide.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  2008 bailout didn't even come close to the size of the Covid one. And there were far fewer "helicopter" dollars, no eviction moratorium, foreclosure moratorium, student debt forbearance. And the economy was much worse back then, with many high profile bankruptcies and slow gains in employment The initial Covid packages were warranted, but the packages passed in December 2020 and March 2021 were largely unnecessary after the initial shock had passed and the velocity in the drop in unemployment was already strong. Or they may have been warranted at a much smaller magnitude with more discretion in who received benefits. The consequence now is that the economy is so overstimulated, we basically have to force the recession we would have had anyway to prevent it from overheating. So we'll end up in the same place, but with a ton of extra debt to service
- Zircom 4y ago
  I'm all for the student loan bailout, at least this one is going directly to the pockets of consumers instead of having to trickle down like the PPP loans or previous corporate bailouts.
  - lend000 4y ago
    Student loan holders already received 2 years of paused payments and an effective 20%+ reduction in debt due to inflation over that period. There is a lot wrong with our education system (including guaranteed infinite loans incentivizing high tuition prices -- a better system would be to just have some state schools be free, and like in Europe, more competitive. They would only be for people who really need them financially and have great potential academically). However, resetting student loans and letting the system continue is definitely NOT the solution.
    - MauroIksem 4y ago
      Most people didn't get a 20% raise during that time, so stating that debt reduction by 20% is a mute point.
    - MauroIksem 4y ago
walkhour 4y ago
Every policy in the last fifty years of the US government would be perfectly rational if its purpose was to destroy the nuclear and extended family. It may just be coincidence, but there's no doubt these are the consequences. These policies are in line with that, a unequivocal transfer of money from structured hard working families to unstructured broken ones. Removing incentives for the former and adding them for the latter. It's very easy to destroy social fabric top down, but it can only be created bottom up.
- escapedmoose 4y ago
  > Every policy in the last fifty years of the US government would be perfectly rational if its purpose was to destroy the nuclear and extended family. How do you figure?
  - KBme 4y ago
    That is how benefits work. It is called imcome redistribution and the people doing it are proud of it. They also like to pretend it helps the poor and disenfranchised. All it does is encourage freeloading and cheating, as well as disincentivising success.
- vmception 4y ago
  If only anything in the government was that coordinated.
  - RhysU 4y ago
    Suppose that it wasn't coordinated but rather emergent. Then less government would be the obvious answer. Notice less government is therefore the answer regardless of why we keep getting these outcomes.
vmception 4y ago
The best time to get money is when everyone is scared that money wont matter.
ausbah 4y ago
the covid bailouts were the only reason we didn't see massive economic collapse in the middle of the pandemic
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  This is the low effort response every time. Where is the nuance in the thinking around magnitude and implementation of policy? It's not a black/white situation of choosing between economic collapse or hyperinflation at all. And keep in mind there were 3-4 huge packages passed. It's not like this had to be done as a single rushed magnum opus bill, this is the consequence of many bills and executive actions passed over 2 years, coinciding with a Fed that had unilateral power to ease the brakes yet did nothing for 2 years.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Well I mean our political climate is why it had to be passed in a huge bill. When every bill of any importance is passed with narrow margins and political capital is finite you’re incentivized to have “big pushes” because you likely wont get another shot.
    - colpabar 4y ago
      > you likely wont get another shot I'm not really that familiar with legislative processes, but this seems ridiculous if it's true. Isn't it the job of the house to write bills? What else do they have to do? Why won't they get another shot? I think it's just a lack of political will. Not from regular people, but from politicians. People love to point to a huge 1000+ page bill that didn't pass because the guys voted it down and say "oh well we can't have X because the other guys voted against it". If "your guys" are really interested in having X, why don't they just write another bill that contains the minimum language to enact it? We should really reject these massive "omnibus" bills out of principle. No one even reads them! There's no reason we can't have simple, targeted legislation that is limited to exactly one topic.
- gumby 4y ago
  Regardless of my opinion on Covid bailouts (too big, too small, too many, too few) all such interventions are squeezing a balloon: you shift the problem temporally. There’s nothing wrong with doing that (people sensibly borrow to purchase and use assets all the time). And when people are in the middle of a crisis it’s appropriate to take action (even in a drought the fire brigade sprays water on a fire). But it’s worth looking retrospectively to figure out how much to do next time, not to be absolutist about it one way or the other.
gamblor956 4y ago
A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans. https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel... If you had bothered to follow up on that, you would have learned that all of these Bachelor(ette) contestants employed other people and used the PPP loans to pay those salaries during the PPP period when their normal revenue streams were unavailable due to COVID restrictions (Tayisha Adams actually went into detail about how and why she used the loan in the linked article). Which was quite literally the point of the PPP loans. But I get that critical thinking is hard when you have an ideological point to make and you just want to shit talk other people. Guess what? A lot of tech companies also took out PPP loans. Former HC darling Mixpanel took PPP loans. As did Bird, and a number of dating apps. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/ppp-loans-to-tech-start-ups-bird-mixpanel-grindr-on-the-list.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/ppp-loans-to-tech-start-ups-...) Are we calling them unscrupulous too?
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Yes, proof of impaired revenue or profit streams with a certain threshold should have been a requirement for PPP. Much lower income thresholds should have been applied to stimulus checks. Student loan debt should not have been paused for high earners. Interest rates should not have been pegged at 0 while asset bubbles formed over all asset classes. That's called rational and responsible policy. Enforcement could have been retroactive to avoid delaying disbursement of funds. It's not hard to write sensible legislation, even under a time crunch. And hardships come naturally to business all the time. It's not the government's role to save everybody in every situation. Companies that were financially irresponsible or poorly run should naturally fail when economic times get rough. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We saved everybody just to end up with massive inflation which will require forcing the economy into recession anyway, defeating the entire purpose and impact of the stimulus. Make no mistake, unemployment will spike in a big way as the Fed tightens, just as it has essentially every other time they had to tighten to curb inflation. The aid was right, the magnitude was far overdone. It will be quite obvious to historians, though it's obvious even now.
  - 4y ago

usrn 4y ago

Chances are they don't have children.

adam_arthur 4y ago
Beyond your own children, lawmakers should care about making policy that benefits the future of society. Perhaps too altruistic for some. But now that inflation is here and consumer sentiment is close to all time lows, the jig is up.

newbamboo 4y ago

“class of people so eager to take wealth/future prosperity from their children” Agreed. Very Ugolino.

ourmandave 4y ago

There's been a lot of U.S. gov bailouts before covid. https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/government-financial-bailout.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/08/governmen... The next one looks like student loans which totals $1.61T nation wide.

adam_arthur 4y ago
2008 bailout didn't even come close to the size of the Covid one. And there were far fewer "helicopter" dollars, no eviction moratorium, foreclosure moratorium, student debt forbearance. And the economy was much worse back then, with many high profile bankruptcies and slow gains in employment The initial Covid packages were warranted, but the packages passed in December 2020 and March 2021 were largely unnecessary after the initial shock had passed and the velocity in the drop in unemployment was already strong. Or they may have been warranted at a much smaller magnitude with more discretion in who received benefits. The consequence now is that the economy is so overstimulated, we basically have to force the recession we would have had anyway to prevent it from overheating. So we'll end up in the same place, but with a ton of extra debt to service
Zircom 4y ago
I'm all for the student loan bailout, at least this one is going directly to the pockets of consumers instead of having to trickle down like the PPP loans or previous corporate bailouts.
- lend000 4y ago
  Student loan holders already received 2 years of paused payments and an effective 20%+ reduction in debt due to inflation over that period. There is a lot wrong with our education system (including guaranteed infinite loans incentivizing high tuition prices -- a better system would be to just have some state schools be free, and like in Europe, more competitive. They would only be for people who really need them financially and have great potential academically). However, resetting student loans and letting the system continue is definitely NOT the solution.
  - MauroIksem 4y ago
    Most people didn't get a 20% raise during that time, so stating that debt reduction by 20% is a mute point.
  - MauroIksem 4y ago

walkhour 4y ago

Every policy in the last fifty years of the US government would be perfectly rational if its purpose was to destroy the nuclear and extended family. It may just be coincidence, but there's no doubt these are the consequences. These policies are in line with that, a unequivocal transfer of money from structured hard working families to unstructured broken ones. Removing incentives for the former and adding them for the latter. It's very easy to destroy social fabric top down, but it can only be created bottom up.

escapedmoose 4y ago
> Every policy in the last fifty years of the US government would be perfectly rational if its purpose was to destroy the nuclear and extended family. How do you figure?
- KBme 4y ago
  That is how benefits work. It is called imcome redistribution and the people doing it are proud of it. They also like to pretend it helps the poor and disenfranchised. All it does is encourage freeloading and cheating, as well as disincentivising success.
vmception 4y ago
If only anything in the government was that coordinated.
- RhysU 4y ago
  Suppose that it wasn't coordinated but rather emergent. Then less government would be the obvious answer. Notice less government is therefore the answer regardless of why we keep getting these outcomes.

vmception 4y ago

The best time to get money is when everyone is scared that money wont matter.

ausbah 4y ago

the covid bailouts were the only reason we didn't see massive economic collapse in the middle of the pandemic

adam_arthur 4y ago
This is the low effort response every time. Where is the nuance in the thinking around magnitude and implementation of policy? It's not a black/white situation of choosing between economic collapse or hyperinflation at all. And keep in mind there were 3-4 huge packages passed. It's not like this had to be done as a single rushed magnum opus bill, this is the consequence of many bills and executive actions passed over 2 years, coinciding with a Fed that had unilateral power to ease the brakes yet did nothing for 2 years.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Well I mean our political climate is why it had to be passed in a huge bill. When every bill of any importance is passed with narrow margins and political capital is finite you’re incentivized to have “big pushes” because you likely wont get another shot.
  - colpabar 4y ago
    > you likely wont get another shot I'm not really that familiar with legislative processes, but this seems ridiculous if it's true. Isn't it the job of the house to write bills? What else do they have to do? Why won't they get another shot? I think it's just a lack of political will. Not from regular people, but from politicians. People love to point to a huge 1000+ page bill that didn't pass because the guys voted it down and say "oh well we can't have X because the other guys voted against it". If "your guys" are really interested in having X, why don't they just write another bill that contains the minimum language to enact it? We should really reject these massive "omnibus" bills out of principle. No one even reads them! There's no reason we can't have simple, targeted legislation that is limited to exactly one topic.
gumby 4y ago
Regardless of my opinion on Covid bailouts (too big, too small, too many, too few) all such interventions are squeezing a balloon: you shift the problem temporally. There’s nothing wrong with doing that (people sensibly borrow to purchase and use assets all the time). And when people are in the middle of a crisis it’s appropriate to take action (even in a drought the fire brigade sprays water on a fire). But it’s worth looking retrospectively to figure out how much to do next time, not to be absolutist about it one way or the other.

gamblor956 4y ago

A bunch of The Bachelor contestants were also caught taking borderline fraudulent PPP loans. https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel https://pagesix.com/2021/06/28/tayshia-adams-and-more-bachel... If you had bothered to follow up on that, you would have learned that all of these Bachelor(ette) contestants employed other people and used the PPP loans to pay those salaries during the PPP period when their normal revenue streams were unavailable due to COVID restrictions (Tayisha Adams actually went into detail about how and why she used the loan in the linked article). Which was quite literally the point of the PPP loans. But I get that critical thinking is hard when you have an ideological point to make and you just want to shit talk other people. Guess what? A lot of tech companies also took out PPP loans. Former HC darling Mixpanel took PPP loans. As did Bird, and a number of dating apps. (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/ppp-loans-to-tech-start-ups-bird-mixpanel-grindr-on-the-list.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/06/ppp-loans-to-tech-start-ups-...) Are we calling them unscrupulous too?

adam_arthur 4y ago
Yes, proof of impaired revenue or profit streams with a certain threshold should have been a requirement for PPP. Much lower income thresholds should have been applied to stimulus checks. Student loan debt should not have been paused for high earners. Interest rates should not have been pegged at 0 while asset bubbles formed over all asset classes. That's called rational and responsible policy. Enforcement could have been retroactive to avoid delaying disbursement of funds. It's not hard to write sensible legislation, even under a time crunch. And hardships come naturally to business all the time. It's not the government's role to save everybody in every situation. Companies that were financially irresponsible or poorly run should naturally fail when economic times get rough. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. We saved everybody just to end up with massive inflation which will require forcing the economy into recession anyway, defeating the entire purpose and impact of the stimulus. Make no mistake, unemployment will spike in a big way as the Fed tightens, just as it has essentially every other time they had to tighten to curb inflation. The aid was right, the magnitude was far overdone. It will be quite obvious to historians, though it's obvious even now.
- 4y ago