NPR: Over $200 billion in pandemic business loans appear to be fraudulent, a watchdog says
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News@kbin.social – 229 points – npr.org
The Office of Inspector General of the Small Business Administration has released a "landscape of fraud" report highlighting why 17% of PPP and other loans appear bogus.
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In economic aid packages like this, the goal is to spread money around in hopes people will spend it. Drop the cash from a helicopter, give it to random citizens, it doesn't actually matter so long as the money goes out the door.
Except if you give it to rich cunts it usually ends up padding their bank accounts instead of being spent on things like food and clothing. Giving money to rich people is a very inefficient form of stimulus. Not to mention just morally not great. $30 spent on champagne stimulates the economy pretty similarly to $30 spent on basic necessities, but the latter is much more helpful to individuals.
The pandemic unemployment assistance was one of the greatest social programs our stupid country has ever done. The PPP loans were a terrible replacement.
What? Haven't you heard about trickle-down economics? Are you saying trickle-down doesn't work?!?!
Except it really does. If you give a billionaire a thousand dollars they're gonna sit on it. If you give a poor person a thousand dollars they are gonna spend it on things they need.
Is that true? All I heard was “nobody wants to work anymore” six months after getting the stimulus checks. Surely the poor were able to turn their $1,400 into millions, right? /s
Which is exactly why people that didn't need the money should be investigated but people that actually used it, even if they didn't need whatever they spent it on, should be left alone.
If we dropped a million dollars from that proverbial helicopter but $900,000 was captured in a safe by Bezos and never distributed throughout the economy, it's just a gift and not effective at the original goal at all.