Scott Galloway on Recode's Pivot podcast made an excellent point:

Government intervention to corporations should only be loans, convertible to equity.

Galloway observes that USA taxpayers actually made money from the 2008-2009 bailouts to corporations.

I'm pretty sure I agree with this policy. I'd like to learn more.

Along with prohibitions on stock buybacks, bonuses for execs, and all the other clever ways people exfiltrate cash from corporations.

So do we just keep sending them the same benefits when they can’t find work because the businesses failed?

Cross that bridge if we get to it.

In that scenario the money sent to them still gets spent locally. They’ll still need to pay rent or mortgage, buy groceries, etc etc. They’re not going to sit on it like corporations do.

Corporations reinvest it and create jobs, the better idea would be to bail out companies but ban stock buybacks. You need businesses, or else jobs won’t exists.

Corporations only "reinvest and create jobs" if they have now choice i.e. the only add more waiters if they have too many customers.

TED Talk: Nick Hanauer "Rich people don't create jobs" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKCvf8E7V1g

As you noted, the spend and windfall on buybacks or maybe automation.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/05/att-promised-700...

People last longer than corporations. The entrepreneurs on this site often create multiple corporations.