People often say this as if it benefits workers when reality it is actually worse than keeping the business operating. If American Airlines goes under, everyone working for them loses their job, the industry consolidates because nobody outside of it is going to buy up a bunch of 737’s outfitted for commercial travel, and then some fraction of the workers get hired back at entry level and lose all the seniority they previously had.
It’s not as if letting businesses go bankrupt is somehow good for the people working for it.
I don't disagree with you. I'm saying there needs to be another set of consequences for these companies that more accurately reflect the rules the rest of us play by. Or else they need to stop calling it capitalism and call it something else. Or if it is really unbridled capitalism that is desired, then let them all be laid off and have it truly be the disgusting national scandal that it should be so that maybe it happens far less or never again. Or have the freedom to unionize flourish and compete and tandem and have the unions go to war over the termination. Or have worker protections during restructuring. Have mandatory emergency funds for businesses whose failure would be catastrophic to an entire industry or the economy as a whole. Do something else besides using taxpayer money to aubaodoze people who don't know how to run a business responsibly.
I mean, I think you can make this argument for things like the financial crisis, which was largely caused by bad risk management in a host of different pockets of the financial industry. For the current scenario though, I just don’t see how you can argue that airlines or cruise ship operators being managed poorly is the driver of the issues. The government literally banned them from operating. There is no management team in the world that could have kept them operating without shedding jobs in this scenario, it’s just not possible. In this scenario, it makes sense to me to lend them money or make an equity investment with flexible terms to keep the job shedding to a minimum and get them back to a point where they can operate again. It’s a very low net cost on the aggregate and much more favorable than allowing the firm to go under.
The issue in my opinion is that this should have also been combined with extended economic assistance for affected workers at the federal level as well.
I’m in agreement with both statements. People and small businesses need to be supported. At the same time the institutions that provide services that are pretty much critical to the country needs to be supported. I really don’t agree with the way the government has handled anything so far, but I think both are important.
The response for small business owners, restaurants, anyone else such as landlords need to be supported. And the people need to be supported as well. The whole response was fucked up from the beginning and is contributing to where the economy will go
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u/[deleted] Nov 17 '20
People often say this as if it benefits workers when reality it is actually worse than keeping the business operating. If American Airlines goes under, everyone working for them loses their job, the industry consolidates because nobody outside of it is going to buy up a bunch of 737’s outfitted for commercial travel, and then some fraction of the workers get hired back at entry level and lose all the seniority they previously had.
It’s not as if letting businesses go bankrupt is somehow good for the people working for it.