>mom and pop shop that is forced to close during the peak should receive money.

No, they shouldn't. Don't give any money to any corporations, give all the money exclusively to people.

If Mom and Pop run a business, they can get cash as humans to float their business, just like any human could. They could temporarily lay off all their staff (which is OK, because their staff are humans, and are also getting cash)

There was never any valid reason to give a single cent to any company.

Right so then after cash runs out no one has a job and no businesses exist?

Companies are more that just a collection of people.

If you give cash to people, they'll use to buy stuff from corporations, Mom&Pop, and uber food. That should create jobs?

The situation was that businesses were not allowed to be open.

I want to convince you this isn’t a good idea. If all the businesses shut down in my town or city, what happens after? Where do I find work? Especially if I don’t have sufficient capital to start a new business (never mind the skills or training), what will I do then? How does society go back to normal?

Do we stop all output and just have the government mail checks to every individual forever? That’s not going to work. Who is going to produce the things we need to function as a society?

Please re-read the comment.

> They could temporarily lay off all their staff

So you pay people's salaries while they're furloughed. Together with moratoria (don't know if this is the word) on loans this means companies get “paused” while lockdowns are ongoing and don't shut down.

Temporarily in the context of covid has meant more than 12 months for a variety of local shops and businesses in my area. They can't come swinging back signing leases and buying inventory after going bankrupt.

I saw 2 kinds of "small" businesses in Canada. One kind was hit so hard the bailout money they got wasn't even close to enough to keep their business running. The other kind wasn't impacted or even benefited from increased revenue.

I know of at least one company in the latter category where the owner pocketed around $500k and I don't think it had much impact on how they ran their business. All they had to do was not layoff people they wouldn't have anyway and the government picked up the tab on their labor costs for a year. Free money!

just keep giving everyone more money Duh!

/s

Well. Actually that’s not as terrible of an idea as you probably think.

Look into “modern monetary theory”

Did mom and dad directly fund political campaign of those in power?

You force them to close if you want them to come back you have to keep them alive.

Keeping the humans alive should be sufficient.

You realize humans need jobs to come back to and humans need places to buy things and services.

No, only the Capitalist Heroes know how to tell people to work. Regular humans are totally insufficient to the task.

Or, instead of funding either corporation, just give mom and pop money. Instead of business bailouts, we should've done regular, recurring stimulus checks that would help business owners cover bills while they're businesses were closed, and help employees cover bills while they're unable to work.

That is exactly what was done here in the Netherlands. Booking.com just decided to exploit and, in my opinion, abuse that system.

Edit: These emergency financial support measures I was referring to are:

- "Temporary emergency scheme for job retention" (NOW)

- "Temporary self-employment income support and loan scheme" (TOZO)

- "Reimbursement Fixed Costs" (TVL)

More info (in English) on gov websites:

- https://www.government.nl/topics/coronavirus-covid-19/inform...

- https://english.rvo.nl/subsidies-programmes/reimbursement-fi...

Edit 2: Oh wait there is more:

- "Subsidy scheme for events cancelled due to corona measures"

- "TVL Stock Support Closed Retail"

- "R&D subsidy scheme for the mobility sector" (RDM)

- "Temporary Support for Necessary Costs" (TONK)

- "Arrangement for businesses damaged by curfew riots" (RBC)

More info: https://business.gov.nl/corona/overview/the-coronavirus-and-...

NOW appears to pay businesses up-front for, in turn, continuing to pay employees: https://business.gov.nl/subsidy/corona-crisis-temporary-emer...

Arguably, it would've been a much better system if the Netherlands just... paid people directly regardless of who they worked for at the time, so employers didn't need to worry about paying employees while they couldn't do normal business.

I think it was similar in Canada. Everyone here that got laid off was eligible for government money though, so I think it would have been better to forgo the wage subsidies for businesses. A lot of them pocketed that money.

Instead they should have let businesses lay off staff without feeling guilty because there was a safety net for those people and once a business laid off X% of their staff they could have been eligible for extra government help.

That way the government wouldn't have ended up paying the wages of people that were needed to meet demand (and make profit for) the businesses that weren't really impacted.

For example, local restaurants got crushed and could easily justify laying off 50%+ of their staff. Give them more money IMO. However, the delivery business down the street with +50% demand shouldn't be getting a nickel.

That's exactly what it is. Reasoning being two-fold, first is that it's easy to implement as the government knows the exact payroll of every company anyways (they file taxes quarterly), second is to keep people on the payroll in case restrictions can be loosened. They're still working, so can go back to productivity immediately.

Yeah the systems are far from perfect. They're inefficient, in some cases unfair, and with regards to abuse perhaps rely a little too much on good faith.

Nevertheless the systems do exist. Financial aid was and even still is there for you or your business if you need it.

Have you counted on how much this would have costed?

The amount the US government has spent on pandemic relief is 20-30k per American, depending on how you choose to count.

(Edit: I’m aware TFA is about about European pandemic relief.)