$755 billion was forgiven. That is roughly $2.5K per person, assuming US population of 300 million.
https://www.wmlawyers.com/2020/07/sex-abuse-victims-outraged...
Just one anecdata, but we (family business) were "people who really needed the help" and got approved for PPP, both times. You needed to be fairly timely on applying because of the absurd demand, though.
We had to file paperwork including our payroll, income/loss sheets and more with our bank (not SBA) who actually did most of the groundwork because any PPP loan not forgiven is on the bank's dime.
In case you weren't aware, PPP stands for Paycheck Protection Program and the monies disbursed by it are only to compensate for payroll expenses during the specified timeframe. Forgiveness also requires resubmission of payroll and other financial documents at time of forgiveness application to prove the PPP money was used for payroll and noone was fired without cause.
PPP does not and could not make up for a fundamentally flawed business model, all it did was compensate for paycheck expenses that could have been impacted by top-down forced shutdowns, particularly since small businesses by their nature usually can't handle wholly unexpected adversities well.
Your overt mischaracterization of PPP is one of many things that made me vote for Trump, by the way. Fake news sensationalism can die in a fire.
Giving everyone more cash with no strings attached would have given them more negotiating power against employers.
Profit may not trickle down like you hope but pain sure does.
Historically, once mass layoffs happen, they are contagious. Once unemployment rates rise, companies plan to cut costs to ride out a recession.
Also, once employees are unemployed for an extended period of time (something like 9+ months), their odds of finding similarly paying work drop permanently.
It was in everybody’s best interest to reduce the employer-employee churn.
And sure, the when the government transfers large amounts of money it's like moving water with a leaky bucket and in this case maybe a colander, but I'd rather be sitting here 5 years later complaining about fraud than a depression.