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The flip side of this is that if the loans weren't given and everybody is closed for lockdown, companies are either firing everybody or going out of business.

The flip side of this is that if the loans weren't given and everybody is closed for lockdown, companies are either firing everybody or going out of business. If that had happened, all of those people would have been applying for unemployment, COBRA, Obamacare plans, Medicaid, etc as well. It was more a question of which Federal accounts to drain. By giving businesses a clear path to making sure they could keep paying people regardless of whether money was coming in from customers, that was avoided. In order to get business owners to take it though, you had to basically give it to them. It was highly variable which businesses could find a way to keep operating in the conditions of lock down and COVID protocols. Remote work was easy. Running a bar was not. Even then you also had exorbitantly high unemployment payments for a long period of time. It wasn't as if the PPP loans were the only money being injected.

pessimizer 4y ago
I'm asking specifics, you're giving me ideology. Unless you have some evidence that people had to prove that they would it would be more profitable to layoff/close unless they got the loan, which is what I've asked. > If that had happened, all of those people would have been applying for unemployment, COBRA, Obamacare plans, Medicaid, etc as well. If we don't prefer direct aid over middlemen, why don't we route all social programs through middlemen? I'd like to volunteer, as long as I'm allowed a 40% cut off the top. I have no objection to the government sending money to people who were made unemployed by covid. I have little objection to the government propping up marginal businesses that serve a valuable purpose in better times, but would otherwise fail during covid without aid, although I feel it was largely a landlord subsidy. I'm asking a process question.
- brightball 4y ago
  I’m not sure what specifics you’re asking for? There were lockdowns for 2 weeks. Any customer facing business that couldn’t have customers walking in to do business was going to have no income for at least that long. If you don’t have income, there’s no money for expenses like payroll. Unless you operate an extremely high margin business, your only options are to not pay staff during that time or to have layoffs. Most small businesses aren’t high margin. As for middlemen, given the short timeline what were the real options for the government? Setup a channel where every individual could apply for direct relief or use existing heavily regulated channels through banks? Keeping the economy moving needed to be the top priority, so existing channels made more sense. We applied for a loan at our small business. We worked with our accountant and banker to make sure everything was handled properly and then documented everything so that we could apply for forgiveness. We didn’t have any issue since our staff had grown by a couple of positions from the prior year. Even though revenues did take a hit, the temporary allowance for telepractice options helped to lessen the overall impact. If not for the PPP loans our business and a lot of others like it would have been staring down bankruptcy and layoffs for about 30 people. And we run a tight margin business. I can’t say that there wasn’t fraud in some places, but for us it worked exactly as intended. The combination of PPP with high unemployment payments that lasted much longer than needed pretty well spread things around. Both of them had an impact on the overall economy. In hindsight, we probably would have been best off by just having people take precautions and avoid lockdowns entirely. Hopefully we will learn from the mistake.

pessimizer 4y ago

I'm asking specifics, you're giving me ideology. Unless you have some evidence that people had to prove that they would it would be more profitable to layoff/close unless they got the loan, which is what I've asked. > If that had happened, all of those people would have been applying for unemployment, COBRA, Obamacare plans, Medicaid, etc as well. If we don't prefer direct aid over middlemen, why don't we route all social programs through middlemen? I'd like to volunteer, as long as I'm allowed a 40% cut off the top. I have no objection to the government sending money to people who were made unemployed by covid. I have little objection to the government propping up marginal businesses that serve a valuable purpose in better times, but would otherwise fail during covid without aid, although I feel it was largely a landlord subsidy. I'm asking a process question.

brightball 4y ago
I’m not sure what specifics you’re asking for? There were lockdowns for 2 weeks. Any customer facing business that couldn’t have customers walking in to do business was going to have no income for at least that long. If you don’t have income, there’s no money for expenses like payroll. Unless you operate an extremely high margin business, your only options are to not pay staff during that time or to have layoffs. Most small businesses aren’t high margin. As for middlemen, given the short timeline what were the real options for the government? Setup a channel where every individual could apply for direct relief or use existing heavily regulated channels through banks? Keeping the economy moving needed to be the top priority, so existing channels made more sense. We applied for a loan at our small business. We worked with our accountant and banker to make sure everything was handled properly and then documented everything so that we could apply for forgiveness. We didn’t have any issue since our staff had grown by a couple of positions from the prior year. Even though revenues did take a hit, the temporary allowance for telepractice options helped to lessen the overall impact. If not for the PPP loans our business and a lot of others like it would have been staring down bankruptcy and layoffs for about 30 people. And we run a tight margin business. I can’t say that there wasn’t fraud in some places, but for us it worked exactly as intended. The combination of PPP with high unemployment payments that lasted much longer than needed pretty well spread things around. Both of them had an impact on the overall economy. In hindsight, we probably would have been best off by just having people take precautions and avoid lockdowns entirely. Hopefully we will learn from the mistake.