Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

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> The government paying for Coronavirus also provides a financial incentive to not fuck it up so badly next time.

It absolutely doesn't. Time and time again, corporations have proven their shareholders (management as well) will simply strip as much value as they can, and leave us (taxpayers via government, citizens with devalued currency via the Fed and their monetary policy) holding the bag with any losses or externalities to clean up.

For example, the Tax Reform Act was sold as incentivizing "jobs and investment"; all it incentivized was share buybacks [1]. Shareholders and management have proven themselves unworthy of trust, or more accurately, public and fiscal policy benefiting them that operates on the honor system. "Fool me once!"

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/10/investing/stock-buybacks-re...

> For example, the Tax Reform Act was sold as incentivizing "jobs and investment"; all it incentivized was share buybacks

So what? If I own a successful company, eventually I'm going to reach a point of diminishing returns. At that point, it no longer makes sense to reinvest my company's profits back into the same company. Eventually, I'm going to use that money to start a new business. Doing that will make more money and create more jobs than trying to scale my old company past the point of diminishing returns.

With a public corporation it's simply a case of management making that judgment on behalf of the collective shareholders.

"The government paying for Coronavirus also provides a financial incentive to not fuck it up so badly next time."

How so?

I think you should have replied to the parent comment. The person you replied to was quoting that so that they could argue against it.

You're asking the wrong poster (that sentence was a quote). But I believe jrockway was referring to the government's response to COVID-19, not to the companies that would be bailed out as toomuchtodo apparently assumed.

The problem with that reasoning is that governments don't suffer the consequences of mismanagement the same way companies and private citizens do. Sure, the elected officials may end up voted out, but the same bureaucrats will still be running things, and the basic institutions and systems that led to the current response aren't likely to change.

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