You are mistaken about how companies actually work, and how they should work. The only rational way to treat a company is in an amoral, unfriendly (wouldn't go so far as to say adversarial) way. Because when push comes to shove, that's how they are going to treat you.
Your personal relationships with coworkers are completely different thing than your relationship with the company. I may have misspoke when I said "corporations are not places where ...". Of course those things happen at corporations; after all you are spending the majority of your waking hours there. All of my best friends come from previous jobs. But the corporation itself is not there to facilitate that and support that, not even as a "side purpose".
ISTM that you do not understand capitalism.
> The reason this is bad optics is because rational and moral people look at these decisions and see them not as amoral acts like you pretend, but evil ones.
Really? It's evil to cut pay by the exact amount the government is giving out, thereby maintaining worker's salary, at a time when it's clear there's not really work for them to do, rather than cutting by an arbitrarily large amount? Or furloughing workers entirely?