There are 30.2 million small businesses in the US, which comprise a whopping 99.9% of all United States businesses and make up for the lion's share of employment. This is very different from Europe.

By bailing out the small business owners, you have a better chance at maintaining employment or for employment to re-emerge after a crisis.

Small business ownership is also a huge source of middle class wealth here in the US. Bailing out small business is essentially bailing out 30 million owner/employers and preserving their middle class wealth.

Obviously big businesses get bailouts here as well, and I happen to agree that if they use money for buy backs, dividends, etc. they should not get stimulus money.

Those stats are a little misleading. Only 18% of employees work at businesses with fewer than 20 employees. And of course most businesses are smaller - it's a lot easier to spend an afternoon filling out "LLC in a box" forms than it is to create a "large" business!

Well I would include larger private companies in that group, you could have 100 employees and still be a small business - for example you could own a small chain of restaurants or franchises, or several hair salons.

But yes really small businesses employ about a fifth of the population.

> By bailing out the small business owners, you have a better chance at maintaining employment or for employment to re-emerge after a crisis.

Why is the goal to maintain employment? Seems like the government wants to keep people on their little hamster wheels.

Those “hamster wheels” are the reason we get to eat, have internet, have shelter with heat/AC. It’s gonna get pretty miserable if we just pay everyone to stay home and do nothing.

> Why is the goal to maintain employment? Seems like the government wants to keep people on their little hamster wheels.

Well, common sense seems to suggest that we would want to have an operational economy again at some point. That generally requires there to be jobs available to people.

What is the alternative to "their little hamster wheels", exactly?

Possibly giving the money directly to the employees, rather than paying their employers?

>they're spending it to keep employees solvent. To accomplish that, not all businesses need to be saved.

To accomplish that, they only need to deposit money into people’s bank account. No employer middleman is required.

A recipient of USA PPP money (our business disaster relief fund) who does not spend it on payroll will have a loan that is due in 18 months. If you spend on payroll (and there are rules to prevent abuse) most of PPP will be forgiven. The USA is clearly trying to keep employees solvent, and as a USA based business owner, I care deeply about my employees, and so do most other business owners I know.

The USA has the self-inflicted problem that we need to keep a maximal number of corporations intact in order to keep employees solvent because US healthcare is unfortunately primarily "employer managed".