> But Palihapitiya argued that rather giving workers relatively small $1,200 checks, the U.S. would be better off giving everyone larger payments directly, and skip businesses entirely.

> “It would be better for the Fed to have given half a million to every man, woman and child in the United States,” he said.

Yes, we can definitely spend checks notes 150 trillion dollars on that. How do people keep making the exact same arithmetic mistake? And why are we expected to listen to people who can't do simple arithmetic?

> Palihapitiya’s argument, basically, is: Let those businesses fail, but without layoffs, and let the rich stakeholders absorb the pain.

> When a business typically fails, Palihapitiya said, “it does not fire their employees,” instead going though a bankruptcy process that often preserves pensions, and employees end up owning more of the company in the end.

Sometimes bankruptcy works out the way he's describing. Sometimes the assets get sold for scrap and the workers are all out of a job. I'm less sanguine than this guy is that letting a whole bunch of companies fail all at once would be a windfall for workers (not to mention everyone else.)

Mind you, I do think that equity holders should be taking a big hit. (That's what equity holders are for.) I just think the details would be a lot messier than he's imagining.