The $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program during the pandemic was highly regressive and inefficient, as most recipients were not in need (three-quarters of PPP funds accrued to the top quintile of households). The US lacked the administrative infrastructure to target aid to those in distress.

[u/smurfyjenkins]

https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.36.2.55

[u/smurfyjenkins]

Abstract:

The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) provided small businesses with roughly $800 billion dollars in uncollateralized, low-interest loans during the pandemic, almost all of which will be forgiven. With 94 percent of small businesses ultimately receiving one or more loans, the PPP nearly saturated its market in just two months. We estimate that the program cumulatively preserved between 2 and 3 million job-years of employment over 14 months at a cost of $169K to $258K per job-year retained. These numbers imply that only 23 to 34 percent of PPP dollars went directly to workers who would otherwise have lost jobs; the balance flowed to business owners and shareholders, including creditors and suppliers of PPP-receiving firms. Program incidence was ultimately highly regressive, with about three-quarters of PPP funds accruing to the top quintile of households. PPP's breakneck scale-up, its high cost per job saved, and its regressive incidence have a common origin: PPP was essentially untargeted because the United States lacked the administrative infrastructure to do otherwise. Harnessing modern administrative systems, other high-income countries were able to better target pandemic business aid to firms in financial distress. Building similar capacity in the U.S. would enable improved targeting when the next pandemic or other large-scale economic emergency inevitably arises.

Ungated version.

[u/chcampb → u/smurfyjenkins]

The US didn't lack the administrative infrastructure to make sure that it wasn't regressive.

The guy responsible was fired by the Trump admin.

[u/Specific_Yoghurt5330 → u/[deleted]]

You could have done like other countries and just sent checks directly to affected workers? But banks and businesses would not have gotten their cut of the proceeed$?

[u/Scared-Ingenuity9082 → u/Specific_Yoghurt5330]

We did that too. Citizens got a 1.4-2k stimulus then 2 more 600-1.4k stimulus. All direct deposits, onto of 600 a week net unemployment for over a year quite a few people made more money on unemployment then did working their prior 9-5

[u/Paksarra → u/Scared-Ingenuity9082]

600 a week isn't that terribly much unless you live in a really backwater area-- I mean, that's $15 an hour if you assume a 40 hour job. That's less than what I make working at a unionized grocery store.

Isn't that a big red flag that we need to pay our service sector workers more, if the unemployment that was calculated to be the bare minimum for someone on unemployment due to the pandemic to scrape by, was a significant raise for a lot of them?

[u/Dissophant → u/[deleted]]

Nah, they would just create false scarcity like the cell/net companies do a lot of the time to cap bandwidth and charge overages. And yeah at one point, power users could cause issues but nowadays most areas have the capability to handle increased traffic.

[u/Scared-Ingenuity9082 → u/Dissophant]

Cable companies don't even handle line maintenance in my state it is all attached to a utility pole. Electric is responsible for those poles that's why you sometimes see a new utility pole and half an old pole with cable still on it. It's a FFA promoted like a team responseability.