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