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Comment by gdubs | Hacker News Reader

"This country has socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the poor."

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, 1968

Do we need to rescue the airlines? I'm gonna guess that's pretty essential to the economic recovery at large. But it's hard to ignore the fact that in this country, when poor people make mistakes [or, in this case are the victims of circumstance], they typically eat those mistakes. Medical bankruptcies, unable to cover a $500 emergency, etc.

So, ok, let's rescue all the industries that juiced their share prices over saving for a rainy day – but, for the love of god, can we please also bail out 'main street' this time around?

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" But it's hard to ignore the fact that in this country, when poor people make mistakes [or, in this case are the victims of circumstance], they typically eat those mistakes. Medical bankruptcies, unable to cover a $500 emergency, etc"

This may be the case. But would you rather have thousands of people without jobs in the airline industry and the many other jobs that will be lost as a result of the bankrupt airlines?

Bailing out these industries out is in essence allowing many people to keep their job.

one option is to bail them out but with strings attached. Demand concessions that are good for labor and for the consumer public in exchange for the bailout. Don't just let them put all savings into pockets of executives and shareholders (while promoting "ration and save/pull yourself by bootstraps" ideology to the poor, of course) then run crying to the taxpayers because they're too big to fail.

Or to just nationalize them, many other countries have government owned airlines.

best time to do something like this too

Bail out the customers.

Sure. So you give the customers a one time bailout and in exchange, thousands are out of jobs.

Great plan!

You're basically arguing that these jobs are government jobs, as without government bailouts, these jobs would not exist.

Let them fail. Others will come in because people will need air travel. Competition will come back, and more jobs will be created.

Times will be tough. People will struggle. But these things will happen either way. We can't keep sugar-coating society. If we keep bailing companies out, eventually the US government and its people will be unable to pay.

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