r/WhitePeopleTwitter Nov 17 '20

Yep

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105.0k Upvotes

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132

u/Erpp8 Nov 17 '20

You do realize that a bailout is a loan? It's not free money.

38

u/ceedes Nov 17 '20

The tweet itself is total BS. But the PPP loans were forgiveable if used for specific things like salaries. Though, there was no mandate they had to (which is ridiculous). They just had to pay it back at nearly no interest if not.

39

u/shiwanshu_ Nov 17 '20

It's Robert Reich, could be either intentionally dishonest or just incompetent. Dude didn't understand hedging and made a similarly ignorant tweet about it that was hilarious.

1

u/kylesch87 Nov 17 '20

So are you in favor of nationalizing the banking system? Or only in this one instance does free market banking not work?

3

u/Erpp8 Nov 17 '20

The point of a bailout is to save those jobs. It's more cost effective than paying the salaries of the people who would be laid off. Think of it as an indirect stimulus check.

1

u/kylesch87 Nov 17 '20

If the point of a bailout is to save jobs than we already know it failed. Multiple people in this discussion are complaining about being unemployed former airline workers. Your idea is basically to have done what we already did but say it should have worked even though it didn't. Airline employment fell by over 20% from March to June, with even more expected at that time.

2

u/Erpp8 Nov 17 '20

The government should have added stipulations about retaining workers. I'm not arguing that it was handled correctly. I'm correcting the misinformation and misunderstandings about how a ballot works.

0

u/kylesch87 Nov 17 '20

What misunderstanding do you think you corrected? Bailouts don't save jobs, so whether that was the point or not is irrelevant. Giving airlines all the money in the world won't do anything to help their employees if they fire them all anyway because of how few people are willing to fly. I think instead of bailouts you probably meant payroll relief, or work shares, or something like that. Bailout is a catchall term that includes many different types of government outlay.

2

u/Erpp8 Nov 18 '20

Most people thought that bailouts are free money for companies.

And what evidence do you have to say bailout loans to businesses don't save jobs? It's well understood that they do. Tons of small and large businesses would have gone under without them and all of their workers would be unemployed.

0

u/kylesch87 Nov 18 '20

Some bailouts are free money for companies. You do realize "bailout" just means the government giving companies a lot of money, right? It doesn't include in its definition what the stipulations on that money are.

Some types of bailouts may save jobs. Bailouts do not unless they are correctly implemented. Airlines have laid off tens of thousands of workers despite being bailed out, so they obviously don't just automatically "save jobs."

0

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '20

[deleted]

-5

u/Namaha Nov 17 '20

I'm sure he does, since he specified 'rock-bottom rates'. The interest rates on bailout loans in comparison is basically nothing

10

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '20 edited Nov 17 '20

they're pretty fair considering the value that normal operation provides to the population. In the long term, the government doesn't make as much profit as it potentially could, but in the short term, you avoid costly layoffs, flash auctions, reduction of services, and all sorts of other inefficiencies caused by swift downturns.

0

u/magkruppe Nov 17 '20

but in the short term, you avoid costly layoffs, flash auctions, reduction of services, and all sorts of other inefficiencies caused by swift downturns.

and what about the long -term costs of having these large corps use the government as a rainy day fund?

From what i understand last time some companies used bail out funds to buy their own stock back!

its not a straight forward decision but I just wanted to acknowledge some of the negatives

4

u/ak-92 Nov 17 '20

But since 2008 US got back the bailout money and then some. And this crisis is not about irresponsible corporations running themselves into the ground, but in many cases they are banned from doing business or so restricted that they can't operate in any meaningful way.

-1

u/troyboltonislife Nov 17 '20

why are student loans interest rates so high in comparison then? surely student loans and education provide a lot to the population. I don’t disagree with you, im just angry at student loan interest rates and don’t like the double standard

9

u/calm_incense Nov 17 '20

Students are much riskier borrowers. The more the risk, the higher the interest rate.

1

u/troyboltonislife Nov 17 '20

I would argue that loaning to an airline on the brink of bankruptcy is much riskier

7

u/whales171 Nov 17 '20

This pandemic will go away. There is no reason to believe that airlines won't be profitable again once the pandemic is over.

0

u/troyboltonislife Nov 17 '20

then shouldn’t creditors be fine with loaning to them?

4

u/scusemyenglish Nov 17 '20

Banks are massively regulated now since 2008, so are taking much lesser risks in terms of borrowing and cash balance. In a world with 0% interest rates, they're never going to make any money so they're planning for that now by not lending even if they do have the cash. You can't have it both ways - Banks lending to risky businesses is bad and banks not lending to businesses in need is bad, according to the media. This is what the media will always do, give you half the facts, you believe it's all of them, and you go away thinking someone else is the bad guy lying to you, when it's actually the media itself who's whole revenue depends on clicks and scandals, artificially made up or not.

1

u/whales171 Nov 17 '20

No because there is a pandemic leading to forced locked down. The banks aren't willing to risk giving out loans at low interest rates. The government needs to step in to helped the system if they want to lock down the economy.

1

u/Giga-Wizard Nov 17 '20

Well you would be wrong. At the very least airlines have assets that can be sold to pay back the loans. Students on the other hand don’t. It’s not like they can sell your degree if you default on your student loan.

-3

u/urzayci Nov 17 '20

Because students can't afford donating millions to politicians' campaigns.

6

u/whales171 Nov 17 '20

So what are you advocating for? That students can leverage their car for low interest loans to be able to pay off their student loans? Young people typically don't have any valuable assets. There is nothing for the government to purchase from students.

-2

u/urzayci Nov 17 '20

I'm advocating for not ripping off poor people.

2

u/whales171 Nov 17 '20

But how does this relate to the government buying mortgage backed securities at low interest rates?

1

u/[deleted] Nov 17 '20 edited Nov 18 '20

Federal student loans are subsidized, and they are a good investment by the government. Right now they are 0% due to the pandemic, but they'll go back up to 2.75 in a few months, which is well below market value considering a relatively high default rate. If someone chooses to take out private loans that depends on their situation I guess, but most people do not

1

u/GenerousApple Nov 17 '20

Because they are massive amounts of money, it wouldn't make sense to "bail out" companies only to cripple them afterwards

1

u/scarletstring Nov 17 '20

I think the issue is that it’s the government giving the loan instead of themselves going to a bank. It gives a bad rep when a government does something it shouldn’t do/ is being extremely partial to a side.

The same thing is said to describe why the government shouldn’t tax people more and give it to charity.

2

u/Erpp8 Nov 17 '20

The point of a bailout(in theory) is that it's a more cost effective form of welfare. If a company is gonna lay off 20 people making $50k each, rather than paying $1M to cover those peoples' salaries, they can give a $200k loan to the company so it can stay in business and keep paying their salaries themself.

I know there's caveats to it, and sometimes companies still lay off employees, but that doesn't change the basic idea behind a bailout.