The focus on payroll is exactly why corporations benefitted at the expense of people.

Providing payroll protection is a very targeted measure against that. The last thing I need is for my six-figure 2019 taxes (good investment returns that year) to be rebated back to me for a job I wasn’t going to lose anyway while 1000s of people in my town lose their restaurant and retail jobs. That’s targeted in exactly the wrong direction I think.

As I said in an edit to my original comment, I run two businesses which each received both PPP loans. I and my employees benefitted. I still think it was unfair.

My employees should have received money directly and been allowed the agency to determine how to spend that money in a pandemic world. Instead, we propped up businesses that failed anyway and now there is less money to invest in new businesses.

I know of businesses that employed people doing nothing. I also know of businesses that took the loan and still laid people off. This is not good for GDP. It would have been better to stimulate at the individual level.