There's not some pre-defined pile of money that billionaires are soaking up. That's not the problem.

[Recursion]

The whole nonsense with the Lakers has clarified this for me.

The Lakers are a small business as defined by US law (fewer than 500 employees). In normal years their revenues are about $178m, $105m of which are from gate receipts and the rest of which are from various licensing deals. (For people who don't know sports economics: the player salaries are completely separate and weirdly not even technically paid by the team, and the players are not legally employees of the team -- it's weird.)

The Lakers' revenue right now is pretty much $0, but they still have employees they would like to keep on the payroll, so they applied for and received a PPP loan. They are literally the legal definition of the kind of organization that was supposed to get this loan. But people flipped the hell out, and they sent the money back.

The issue seems to be that "The LA Lakers" are "a 4 billion dollar business", which I guess is true, in the sense that their brand is appraised at $3.5 billion and their actual assets are worth about $500 million.

There is not some pre-defined pile of money that "billionaires" are soaking up, that is keeping us from taking care of people. We have enough money. We just hate spending it.

[tulipsandroses]

1. I think they should have returned the money as well as all the other big businesses

The biggest problem I see was that there should have been more specific and tighter guidelines about who should qualify, or qualify first.

All those big businesses more than likely have other resources they can tap into. Not so, for true mom and pop businesses and individual proprietors that don't have investors and relationships with big banks that will float them a loan just because they asked.

Stephanie Ruhle who I like, ticked me off a few nights ago talking about the Ruth Chris situation, her premise was - they are not making any money so is it good business sense for them to dip into their reserves to pay employees?

Huh? That is exactly what a lot of small businesses will do to try to keep their businesses afloat - tap into reserves, personal savings, 2nd mortgage, borrow from friends and family if possible.

[Recursion]

2. The Lakers' normal annual revenue is $170 million

Right now it's basically $0.

Isn't this exactly the kind of situation that the Paycheck Protection Plan was passed to deal with?