How do you decide how much to give a business? I don't think it's fair to just give specific industries money. Maybe the company you work for got hurt too but not as bad. Don't you they deserve money? You need to distribute the money to every business in a fair way, but it's pretty much impossible to determine what's fair. You can't just give every "business" the same amount of money and have it be "fair" for several reasons.
Ultimately, at the end of the day it's the citizens who need the money. The easiest way to fairly divide money among people is to divide it evenly. It doesn't matter if they are rich or not. I say give whatever money you were going to give to businesses and give it to the people instead. Don't rely on trickle down.
if you were really interested, it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to come up with a reasonable figure. take average revenue n weeks before the shutdown, then subtract average revenue during the crisis. pay out in proportion to calculated losses, conditional on backpaying employees their average weekly pay. real productivity is down by a lot, so no one is going to be made completely whole, but we could share the burden a lot better than we are now.
as an aside, just giving everyone a flat sum would be the best outcome for me personally. I'm still getting paid and my company is doing fine. I'm arguing against my own interests here, which I don't do often.
Well yeah, citizens also own American companies, so they need the money lost due to their companies (which is their property) not operating. They should be compensated for the loss of enjoyment of their personal property.
> The easiest way to fairly divide money among people is to divide it evenly.
Sure, but that's not fair at all.
> It doesn't matter if they are rich or not.
Well, yeah their wealth doesn't matter, but their income does. Someone making more money and now not making any money due to government intervention is actually owed more than the guy making less money.
> I say give whatever money you were going to give to businesses and give it to the people instead. Don't rely on trickle down.
No, you need to give money to both. People own businesses. If their business is not making money, then that is their money that the government must compensate. Even the largest businesses are owned by people. If some company had a dividend scheduled and is now not doing that due to losses incurred by government activity, the government must pay it.
The World Wars actually ended with a lot of countries indebted to one another.
Your employer-employee relationship does not count, because you are not being forced to work for your employer. They are paying you whatever wage could be agreed on.
That is to say, I am against reparations because I am against collective guilt for something that only some individuals in that collective are responsible for. I am certainly not opposed to collective restitution though, and do think that the descendants of former slaves ought to be compensated.
So, if the government wanted to open up civil lawsuits so that African American descendants of slaves (and slaves from other ethnic groups) could sue their former 'master's' or their former 'master's' children or descendants for wealth inherited, and made a process by which such investigations could be carried out in a reasonable and fair manner, then yes, that would be great.
That being said, libertarianism does quite often support reparations. Not all libertarians of course, but there are lots of libertarians that do, and justify it based on the fact that a person denied liberty deserves restitution, including their descendants.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/return-of-stolen-property-a-li...
Walter Block, a prominent Austrian economics libertarian also makes the case for some kind of reparations:
At least no libertarian that I know support reparations. They believe their position of weakness led them to be taken advantage of so they kind of "deserved" it. Or their labor were put to better use.
My civil torts would not be based on what ifs (like whether they could have had my job or school place), but on the best approximated wages owed to their ancestors that they ought to have inherited. The money would be paid out via those assets inherited by descendants of slave owners. Many southern plantations are still owned by slaver families and they generate revenue. This revenue is rightly due to the slaves descendants.
I dont have any responsibility for slavery in this country because my family wasn't around at the time and i dont have any inheritance.