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Comment by akagusu | Hacker News Reader

One interesting thing I noticed here is that people don't have see any problem when government give large subsidies to big corps full of money or forgive their debts or use public money to "save" them during economic crashes, but when government give money to people whatever the reason, there is all kind of comments about how this is a bad thing and why government should not be doing it.

Why people are so merciful to big rich companies but so ruthless to other people?

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> One interesting thing I noticed here is that people don't have see any problem when government give large subsidies to big corps full of money or forgive their debts or use public money to "save" them during economic crashes, but when government give money to people whatever the reason, there is all kind of comments about how this is a bad thing and why government should not be doing it.

> Why people are so merciful to big rich companies but so ruthless to other people?

Because that's a straw man? A lot of people aren't OK with the government "give[ing] large subsidies to big corps full of money."

You should try asking "people" what they think of bank bailouts sometime.

Part of the reason is that what most people care about is their relative standing (i.e. doing better than their neighbor). Handouts to the rich do not change their relative social standing in society, whereas handouts to people like them (but not them directly), do.

The relative standing matters so much because it affects your social capital (and since your genes are always trying to find/mate with the best possible partner, relative social standing feels a lot more important than absolute one)

That is the reason behind a lot of the backlash to programs like this. It changes (in a small way) the relative standing of ordinary people. Same underlying reason as the NIMBY movement.

The bailouts were loans that were paid back. You know, that thing you're supposed to do when you agree to take out a loan.

Also, those companies failing would have lead to not only their employees getting hurt, but possibly plunge us into a depression - hurting everyone.

What this loan forgiveness does is help a select few by hurting literally everyone else.

You are mistaken.

The covid bailouts were interest-free loans, which are actual free money.

Obviously there were a billion different programs but most people complain about the PPP, which were intended to go to...you know, paychecks. Paychecks for employees that could no longer work due to government enforced shutdowns.

It's a bit of a different situation.

Ostensibly true but in reality if the business were going to pay their employees anyway, they really could do whatever they want with it. It's free $$$ in the same sense as the student loan forgiveness, yet curiously there is much more criticism on here directed towards the latter.

They aren't. You assume that nothing in government happens unless citizens directly order it to; this is a bad assumption. Most of what happens in government, especially at the federal level, is out of the hands of citizens. This is by design as we are a representative republic, but that relies on representatives not being corrupted and controlled by lobbyists and special interests. In the low-trust country we now live in, grift is the order of the day.

Not sure I buy that strawman. Big corp bailouts were wildly unpopular all sides in 2008, and still are.

Edit: that's also ignoring the position of "don't bail out corps and don't bail out individuals alike"

Not unpopular enough to have been repeatedly postponed, vetoed and eventually watered down though, like this one.

To me that speaks more to the will of politicians and where their true interests are aligned and/or the impact of lobbying. There is no money to be made by forgiving student loans.

It’s a VC site…

Big companies with that money can hire more employees, offering the community more jobs and furthering our economy. It's very rare for a large company to take a subsidy and hoard it, or not use it for public goodwill.

Really? I don’t typically think of companies as magnanimously providing public goodwill, and you could argue that hoarding cash is what plenty of companies have been doing for the last 15 years.

To what degree does that money convert to salary for employees that aren't managerial level? And if a company is in bad shape, shouldn't cuts happen despite a cash infusion?

Big companies top priorities are investor returns, not employing the masses. The result you describe is dependent on many more variables, like product demand actually necessitating hiring.

And pay those employees less than minimum wage if they can get away with it.

> It's very rare for a large company to take a subsidy and hoard it, or not use it for public goodwill.

Citation needed.

Their PR team of course!

> And pay those employees less than minimum wage if they can get away with it.

Citation needed. Regardless, it's not up to companies to be charities - everyone is acting in their own best interest, of course.

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