[stvswn]

Fraud aside, which is a problem, the "forgiveness" of the loans was the plan all along so it's not as if businesses were expected to pay them back.

The program was really a bailout so businesses could maintain their payrolls when everything was shutdown. Instead of writing the checks directly, the government decided to frame it as a loan that would be forgiven if businesses stayed in business and spent it on their payrolls. This was a good strategy for the government, because it would have been pretty tough to enforce otherwise.

So the loan forgiveness was by _design_ and the point of the program was to keep businesses alive when the governments themselves were (for perhaps good reason) making it impossible for them to operate. It's not really "forgiveness" in the sense of, say, the college loan forgiveness program.

[caseysoftware]

> So the loan forgiveness was by _design_ and the point of the program was to keep businesses alive when the governments themselves were (for perhaps good reason) making it impossible for them to operate. It's not really "forgiveness" in the sense of, say, the college loan forgiveness program.

I think this is a key point.

The PPP "loans" effectively became a payout to mitigate the chance & success of businesses suing the government en mass for the shutdown orders.

When you sue an entity civilly, you have to show damages. The PPP "loans" countered those damages (and often more) which means the threshold for a successful lawsuit just got WAY higher.

[brightball]

Exactly.

You kept people employed and on their employers insurance, benefits, etc. You let businesses try to remain as operational as possible during the shut down.

The alternative was going to be mass layoffs, unemployment and medicaid/aca applications.

The people who keep harping on PPP seem to forget everything else that was done in the same time period.

[nrmitchi]

There’s a difference between people complaining about PPP as a concept (which I don’t think many are?) and complaining about PPP abuse, funds being given to companies that were not impacted by shut downs, straight up fraud, and people taking PPP money and buying lambos.

[tastyfreeze]

There was another alternative of not forcing businesses to shut down in the first place.