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giving away money to business owners is always OK by the lights of people in power, since business owners help make the people in power rich. giving money to lo

giving away money to business owners is always OK by the lights of people in power, since business owners help make the people in power rich. giving money to loser normies who can't pay their student loans? what's in it for them?

dmix 4y ago
This is a cute theory but in reality it's far more likely to be usual government malaise, laziness, and disregard for long term consequences than some organized secret push by millionaires with pull in the government.
- colpabar 4y ago
  Yeah, anyone who thinks wealthy people have any pull in the united states government and use it to make themselves more wealthy must be some crazy alt right conspiracy theorist. Probably a white nationalist too. We all know everyone in the government is just dumb and all the trillions of dollars they waste is just because they make mistakes in excel and stuff.
  - prottog 4y ago
    Sure, one should always ask "Cui bono?", but it's equally important to also examine the incentive structures at play which drive the leviathan that is the government. At its core, the trillions of dollars of wasteful spending happens because politicians are rewarded for spending money and punished for asking where that money comes from or how effective the spending actually was, many years later. A good example is the Covid lockdowns that benefited the likes of Amazon or Home Depot at the expense of Main Street businesses. Cui bono? Certainly the wealthy class did. But did they collude and whisper into the ears of the halls of power in federal, state, and local levels (which all played roles in lockdowns) to make sure that people were forced to lock down harder and longer? No -- it's just the incentive structure. Politicians and bureaucrats had the choice between being rewarded for taking "decisive action" against the spread of the virus or pilloried for doing nothing, even if in hindsight it appears that we would have been better off doing nothing. Stuff like this is precisely why conservatives argue for limited government and more delegation of powers to lower levels of government. It's much easier for a wealthy person to have pull on a single US senator to make themselves more wealthy, than for that same person to have pull on twenty different state senators, or five hundred different city councilors.
    - dmix 4y ago
      It’s always the simpler answer, and as you point out looking at the sum of potential incentives usually points to the simplest solution. That being incompetence and laziness, not a large organized campaign of corruption by the wealthy elite. I highly doubt the people engaging in PPP/Covid fraud are the typical power players in gov. Those people steal money through much more legal means like gov grants and contracts that end up costing 4x and taking 2x longer.

dmix 4y ago

This is a cute theory but in reality it's far more likely to be usual government malaise, laziness, and disregard for long term consequences than some organized secret push by millionaires with pull in the government.

colpabar 4y ago
Yeah, anyone who thinks wealthy people have any pull in the united states government and use it to make themselves more wealthy must be some crazy alt right conspiracy theorist. Probably a white nationalist too. We all know everyone in the government is just dumb and all the trillions of dollars they waste is just because they make mistakes in excel and stuff.
- prottog 4y ago
  Sure, one should always ask "Cui bono?", but it's equally important to also examine the incentive structures at play which drive the leviathan that is the government. At its core, the trillions of dollars of wasteful spending happens because politicians are rewarded for spending money and punished for asking where that money comes from or how effective the spending actually was, many years later. A good example is the Covid lockdowns that benefited the likes of Amazon or Home Depot at the expense of Main Street businesses. Cui bono? Certainly the wealthy class did. But did they collude and whisper into the ears of the halls of power in federal, state, and local levels (which all played roles in lockdowns) to make sure that people were forced to lock down harder and longer? No -- it's just the incentive structure. Politicians and bureaucrats had the choice between being rewarded for taking "decisive action" against the spread of the virus or pilloried for doing nothing, even if in hindsight it appears that we would have been better off doing nothing. Stuff like this is precisely why conservatives argue for limited government and more delegation of powers to lower levels of government. It's much easier for a wealthy person to have pull on a single US senator to make themselves more wealthy, than for that same person to have pull on twenty different state senators, or five hundred different city councilors.
  - dmix 4y ago
    It’s always the simpler answer, and as you point out looking at the sum of potential incentives usually points to the simplest solution. That being incompetence and laziness, not a large organized campaign of corruption by the wealthy elite. I highly doubt the people engaging in PPP/Covid fraud are the typical power players in gov. Those people steal money through much more legal means like gov grants and contracts that end up costing 4x and taking 2x longer.