dougthonus wrote:Dresden wrote:There is also an ethical consideration to this. If everyone is paying taxes, it is extremely unfair for one taxpayer to get left in the cold by the govt., while the next taxpayer gets fully funded.
LIfe isn't fair in how our government distributes tax dollars in any other situation in our economy. The benefits for everyone vary extremely widely.
Their goal should be to maximize impact of the dollars they spend not to be fair. I'm not suggesting that they are accomplishing that goal, but in a theoretical debate I'd rather save 1 million jobs than 900k jobs even if what I did was less fair to some individuals compared to others.
If you absolute need X to keep a business alive and there are 3 of them, and you only have 2X, it's better to give two businesses X and the other 0 than to give all of them 2/3rds of X and watch all 3 fold. Again, not saying it's that cut and dry or that this is the scenario going out, but it's definitely a possible scenario that exists.
More likely than anything else, they are stuck with a lot of logistical problems where they can't get all of the correct information in place in time and its easier and faster to give everyone what they apply for than to wait longer for all applications, analyze them, then come up with some shared pool to give everyone.
I think while almost all of your arguments work well in theory, they also all discount completely the practicality of the government trying to run this entirely new program without any existing protocols and get the money out in a matter of weeks. Again, not saying they made all the right decisions, just that its not easy to organize, process, and distribute something this big and this new really fast.
I agree that some of the problems were a result of how fast this was pushed through. Banks didn't get instructions until Thursday evening, and were expected to start accepting applications the following morning. There was definitely a trade off made between having everything in place when it began, and getting it going to people could start getting their money.
However, there's also this: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/business/sba-loans-ppp-coronavirus.html
Banks Gave Richest Clients ‘Concierge Treatment’ for Pandemic Aid
"Some businesses seeking coronavirus loans got to avoid flaky online portals or backed-up queues. Many other small businesses couldn’t get their loan requests submitted before the money dried up."
The reporters detail how banks have a two tier system of services set up- those for your average business customer, which the vast majority fall into, and another class for their wealthiest and largest customers. When it came time to process the loans, banks (naturally) favored their big clients, who get their loans processed and out the door and over to the SBA ahead of the little guys.
That should never have been allowed. And it would have been easy to instruct banks that they have to treat all their clients equally, and process the applications in the order they were received. Not according to how much money you have in your account. Things like this are what drive the income gap wider and wider.
I'd also argue that the fact that other govt. programs aren't always fair in who gets the benefits should not serve as excuse for why this program couldn't be administered in a more fair and equal manner.
