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Comment by xdennis | Hacker News Reader

> I'm not really sure why there is so much anger

Because it's unfair to have millionaires bailed out. When the poor make bad decisions they don't get bailed out.

I don't like the idea of millionaires who make bad decisons being bailed out either, but it's not clear that is what is happening here.

Firstly not clear that this is really a bail-out in the usual sense. No tax-payer money is going to these millionaires, and any costs (if there are any, which isn't entirely clear) are going to go to other banks and their shareholders.

Secondly not clear that depositing money in SVB was a "bad decision" - doing this wasn't a risky thing VCs did to try and get rich.

Won't the remaining banks just pass on those extra costs onto the customers anyway? So at the end of the day, "the people" will end up paying for the bail-outs, just with a few extra steps.

Good question. In theory no - it's not supposed to work that way because competition between banks would prevent it. I've no idea how likely it is to happen in practice though. (Edit: But my unqualified guess is that at least some costs will indeed get passed on)

...if they are poor they would be under FDIC limits and would be the FIRST to be bailed out?

Non-rich people get bailed out constantly. What else is unemployment, Medicaid, welfare, social security, etc? Plus things like eviction moratoriums, foreclosure protection, FMLA, etc. The social safety net often protects those that made bad life decisions… or were just unlucky, but are we sure SVB isn’t in the latter category?

To be clear, I think it’s a good thing. Just let’s not pretend the government is only ever helping the rich.

The entire argument of the pro-business, pro-capitalist crowd is that they deserve massive profits because they are the ones taking on risk. Except when they take big hits because of the risk they themselves took on, they also want bailouts. They want all the profits with none of the consequences for risky behavior.

So the difference here is that individuals get the safety net because they are just trying to exist. They're not getting "bailouts", they're getting assistance for things like food and shelter and medical bills.

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