Corporate bankruptcy is a reasonable way to redistribute claims, and we should use it. Not even every business in trouble will go under, a lot will simply be bought by someone wanting to take over the risk at a sensible price. No jobs need to be lost.
I'm all in favour of bailing out real people though.
If we need companies to prepare for this kind of thing, we need to somehow test their readiness more frequently.
But yes, probably even more frequently than every 10 years - it's too easy to cut corners, so someone will, and the businesses behaving "correctly" need to compete against that.
That's if we want companies to be prepared for this.
Give 60k to every family in America, and let the corporations that mis-managed their assets bite the dust.
When there's demand for the services those corporations provided, someone will step up, buy the equipment and other assets, and do it better next time.
I see no wisdom in resisting the nature of our economy, its booms and busts pruning away the bad growth so that better ones have room to develop.
If you're in a stable, single country then I would agree that letting companies fail is likely the healthiest option. But in a global world, you might find that bailing out companies is a prisoners dilemma. If you let your companies die, but your neighbor doesn't, your neighbor's companies might soon capture your market and cost your community a lot of economic activity in the long term. Or, you let your companies die, and they get replaced by a new, smarter business that employs 10% of the original workforce to get the same amount of work done.
There's upsides to both (perhaps net positive even) but the problems are potentially significant. I think framing the survival of companies as merely a favor to wealthy people's portfolios is naive.
What does it tell you about the executives who chose to buy back shares rather than paying down debt?
What does it tell you about the idea that cash and other liquid assets on the balance sheet are detrimental to a company's value because of their impact on fundamental ratios?
I dispute your assertion, though. Boeing will be Boeing no matter what. GE will be GE no matter what. They build technology that would have been viewed as miraculous not too long ago.
Southwest Airlines, on the other hand, is just a bus company.