Dumbfuck in charge

[Deleted User 310]

So owning a small business means that the governement should make sure you don't fail? Even if your business failure has nothing to do with the pandemic? Got it.

Free money for everyone! Yay!

If you keep acting like a child, don't be mad when people treat you like a child.

If you can't be bothered to do some research as to why such actions need to be taken then sit out the conversation.

Wonder if your boss knows you sit on here all day during working hours arguing with strangers and acting like a pompous douchebag? You definitely fit the description.

If Fish or NiceDC or Trad attack me at least i can respect them because they are knowledgeable on most(all) things way more than I am. You are clearly one of the least intelligent people who post here on a daily basis. You repeat and piggy back their ideas....or just repeat what you saw on MSNBC this morning.

[Deleted User 89]

Why are we bailing out airlines?

They should have been responsible and built cash reserves over the last 50 years when they were making billions. They didn't. Let them fail. Let new airline companies form. They will buy the fleets and hire back the trained workers. Bailing them out rewards bad business behavior. Not to mention a portion (maybe a large portion) will go to paying executive salaries or upper class individuals salaries and not the low level workers who are the ones worth protecting since they aren't as financially capable of building cash reserves to survive a furlough. Let them collect unemployment.

Let the airlines fail.

I understand the desire to help small businesses....but at the same time, how many of these small businesses were already losing money prior to the pandemic? Some of these small businesses were on the road to failure anyway. There is risk with being a small business owner. Now, for the businesses that were viable, but forced to close for safety reasons, i totally agree with helping them out....but "small businesses" in general is such a wide ranging term. There are wealthy people who own numerous small businesses who are financially doing just fine during all this (personally), but may have a small business or 2 that wasn't/isn't doing well now that the economic landscape has changed. People won't travel as much anymore, they won't eat out as much anymore...some of these businesses are going to fail regardless. You can't cripple the economy for generations by artificially letting them survive when they will still eventually fail.

End rant.

"Bailing them out" can mean so many things. Do I support just giving the companies cash and hoping everything works out? I do not.

But the airline industry - if expanded to mean the aerospace industry generally - employs hundreds of thousands of Americans, the vast majority being lower- and middle-class. I think the harm that would come from letting the industry simply evaporate for a while is too severe to simply do nothing.

i have no problem with lily’s general premise

but you’re right, that the widespread impact of this hurts more middle and lower income individuals and families. pilots and corporate entities are in the minority. flight attendants, baggage handlers, food workers and the like will all loose their jobs, which would be catastrophic

[Deleted User 310]

Why are we bailing out airlines?

They should have been responsible and built cash reserves over the last 50 years when they were making billions. They didn't. Let them fail. Let new airline companies form. They will buy the fleets and hire back the trained workers. Bailing them out rewards bad business behavior. Not to mention a portion (maybe a large portion) will go to paying executive salaries or upper class individuals salaries and not the low level workers who are the ones worth protecting since they aren't as financially capable of building cash reserves to survive a furlough. Let them collect unemployment.

Let the airlines fail.

I understand the desire to help small businesses....but at the same time, how many of these small businesses were already losing money prior to the pandemic? Some of these small businesses were on the road to failure anyway. There is risk with being a small business owner. Now, for the businesses that were viable, but forced to close for safety reasons, i totally agree with helping them out....but "small businesses" in general is such a wide ranging term. There are wealthy people who own numerous small businesses who are financially doing just fine during all this (personally), but may have a small business or 2 that wasn't/isn't doing well now that the economic landscape has changed. People won't travel as much anymore, they won't eat out as much anymore...some of these businesses are going to fail regardless. You can't cripple the economy for generations by artificially letting them survive when they will still eventually fail.

End rant.

"Bailing them out" can mean so many things. Do I support just giving the companies cash and hoping everything works out? I do not.

But the airline industry - if expanded to mean the aerospace industry generally - employs hundreds of thousands of Americans, the vast majority being lower- and middle-class. I think the harm that would come from letting the industry simply evaporate for a while is too severe to simply do nothing.

i have no problem with lily’s general premise

but you’re right, that the widespread impact of this hurts more middle and lower income individuals and families. pilots and corporate entities are in the minority. flight attendants, baggage handlers, food workers and the like will all loose their jobs, which would be catastrophic

But if we are bailing them out anyway why don't we directly bail out those people you mention? Seems cheaper in the long run.

[Deleted User 89]

$1200 doesn’t go very far when you’ve been unemployed for 6 months

how do you suggest we do what you’re suggesting, given the inability of congress to get much of anything done right now?

[Deleted User 310]

$1200 doesn’t go very far when you’ve been unemployed for 6 months

how do you suggest we do what you’re suggesting, given the inability of congress to get much of anything done right now?

I am not saying only give them $1,200. I think that was too little in the beginning and too many people got it since it was just flat tiers with no thought given to cost of living for a given area. I golf with guys making $150k-ish a year who got the same as grocery store workers who work 3 jobs to make ends meet...and $1,200 in central IL goes A LOT further than it does in Chicago.But that is a different rant.

With what this airline bailout dollar number will be we could pay them their salaries for 6-12months, right? While they look for other jobs or until another more financially viable/responsible company purchases what is left of these giant airlines and hires them back.

Maybe i am too cynical, but my gut is that a large portion of this bailout money doesn't end up helping the people we are wanting to help nearly as much as it should.

[Deleted User 310]

A little off the topic, but instead of bailing out the airlines themselves, what if we hired all these workers that WE ALL want to protect/help and started a nationwide initiative to move to greener energy options? This is the perfect time to do something large scale like that since we are already spending money like crazy and handcuffing future generations..at least do it for something more worthwhile than saving billionaire airline stakeholders ass. New airlines will form if it is a profitable business now and moving forward. I doubt it would take very long tbh.

[Deleted User 89]

why you gotta steal my ideas?

[Deleted User 310]

why you gotta steal my ideas?

[Deleted User 310]

But like you said....good luck getting ANY of that done with the current politcal landscape.

[zsn]

We should have done that to the entire coal mining industry as well as tobacco farmers. Same for the meat processing industry.

For that matter why support farmers hit by the tariff wars? It’s not our fault that they are growing crops subject to trade battles! They should have had cash reserves

[jfish26]

"Bailing them out" can mean so many things. Do I support just giving the companies cash and hoping everything works out? I do not.

But the airline industry - if expanded to mean the aerospace industry generally - employs hundreds of thousands of Americans, the vast majority being lower- and middle-class. I think the harm that would come from letting the industry simply evaporate for a while is too severe to simply do nothing.

i have no problem with lily’s general premise

but you’re right, that the widespread impact of this hurts more middle and lower income individuals and families. pilots and corporate entities are in the minority. flight attendants, baggage handlers, food workers and the like will all loose their jobs, which would be catastrophic

But if we are bailing them out anyway why don't we directly bail out those people you mention? Seems cheaper in the long run.

Because air travel itself must continue, as there are still people that want/need to fly. Maintenance must continue, because ceasing upkeep will result in obsolescence/greater return-to-service costs. Manufacturing must continue, because it would take an incredible amount of time to start back up.

If those things have to continue, then you can't simply let the airlines fail.

The problem is much better solved by keeping the airlines afloat (and the employee employed) than by simply giving people cash.

The issue is that, without bright-line rules, it is proven that banks and airlines and so on will use bailout money on stock buybacks and executive payments.

So, it's a matter of "how." Not "if."

[Deleted User 289]

Hey, we all make mistakes but this one made me smile.
Gump fires? I wonder if he likes to eat desert after dinner.

[Sparko]

Illy: the best way to deal with these systemic problems is to flip the senate. McConnell has been destructive.

[japhy]

Putin says "yes please" for the entree of "economic collapse of vital infrastructure", and he would like "civil war" for dessert.

He will tip the waiter handsomely if he brings his own head on a platter.

[Deleted User 310]

i have no problem with lily’s general premise

but you’re right, that the widespread impact of this hurts more middle and lower income individuals and families. pilots and corporate entities are in the minority. flight attendants, baggage handlers, food workers and the like will all loose their jobs, which would be catastrophic

But if we are bailing them out anyway why don't we directly bail out those people you mention? Seems cheaper in the long run.

Because air travel itself must continue, as there are still people that want/need to fly. Maintenance must continue, because ceasing upkeep will result in obsolescence/greater return-to-service costs. Manufacturing must continue, because it would take an incredible amount of time to start back up.

If those things have to continue, then you can't simply let the airlines fail.

The problem is much better solved by keeping the airlines afloat (and the employee employed) than by simply giving people cash.

The issue is that, without bright-line rules, it is proven that banks and airlines and so on will use bailout money on stock buybacks and executive payments.

So, it's a matter of "how." Not "if."

Agree with the "how" being a major key. If i felt like the money would truly be used to help the workers and not do the things you mention then i wouldn't be so skeptical.

Some airline travel must continue....but if it reduces by say 15%-25%+ forever due to people being influenced by this pandemic then what happens? Some of those airlines are still probably going to fail...and what happens as we continue to move to more green transportation that we decide airplanes are causing too much environmental damage as currently constructed? The airline industry is changing and rapidly, both due to the pandemic and environmental concerns of people. The aviation industry accounts for 11% of all transportation related emissions in the United States according to a NYT article written a few years ago. Maybe flying less is a good thing? Airlines will still exist because they will still make money. Just on a much smaller scale. But the current set up and system isn't sustainable. They just proved that. They apparently couldn't even survive for even 12months during this pandemic without needing a government bailout.

I would just rather we use the money in a better way to help their workers and help ourselves. And NOT to help millioniares and billionaires make sure they can keep making their millions and billions.

[Deleted User 310]

Illy: the best way to deal with these systemic problems is to flip the senate. McConnell has been destructive.

He is the worst.

I filled my ballot out last week and there weren't many Republicans than got their bubble filled by me.

[jfish26]

Illy - We're in agreement on a lot.

For a lot of reasons, I think we won't see air travel return to pre-pandemic levels quickly, if ever.

So I would not be opposed to an element of a "bail out" being paid worker re-training in comparable (but "new") skills.

[japhy]

I was doing a structural assessment years ago for an insurance company at an apartment complex in the KC Metro area. At some point the week before, the floor of a second floor apartment dropped 6 inches along a wall and an elderly woman fell off her couch while watching TV and her furniture slid across the floor pushing her against the wall. The insurance wanted to do some due diligence to see what else they would be insuring against.

The Owner of the apartment complex had their own expert there as well and he was following me around. I went into the crawl space of one of the buildings and it had trenches dug throughout and they were covered with lime that had obviously been wet at some point because it was now a damp paste. So I went back to the truck to get a mask. In the middle of the building there was a steel beam running under the structure, it had a bearing wall three stories tall directly above. The beam was 8 inches deep and was setting on 8 inch concrete blocks. The blocks themselves had no footings or concrete pads under them and were not mortared together, they were just set dry stacked on dirt. Many of the block stacks had rotated anywhere from 10-20 degrees from level. The beam above was also rotated, in mid span the beam’s rotation exceeded that of the block, so there was significant torsional deformation ( youtube can explain that to you if you don’t understand) of the steel. The joists above were not attached to the beam and the beam was not positively attached to the block, everything was held in place by surface friction. I took enough photos to document the condition and then got the hell out of there.

When I came out the Owner’s expert was there and I told him what I saw. He shrugged, “It hasn’t collapsed has it”. I did a very quick calculation out loud for him of the area of the building that was superimposed on a single block and then divided by the area of a concrete block and determined that the dead load bearing pressure exceeded 10 ksf (for reference you would expect to have about 2 ksf for spread footings and that is both dead load plus live load) to which his response was to grin and say one more time, “but it hasn’t collapsed has it?”. At this point I asked him what his background was and he said we had been a contractor in Florida for 20 years and now he was working as an expert in field investigations. I asked if he was a registered structural engineer and he admitted he wasn’t and he had no college degree. This was before youtube so I didn’t ask if he had watched any “expert” videos. I asked if he knew that it was illegal for him to give expert testimony or to give engineering opinions in the State of Kansas without an engineering license. This took some of the shine off his grin.

I advised the Owner and my client that I needed to contact the City Code officials and report a dangerous building and that no one should enter the building at this time. The building had tenants living in it, but they should not be allowed to go inside and remove their belongings because the building was in state of partial collapse. The rest of the day was a shit show of angry people, threats of lawsuits and concerned city officials.

Three weeks later I was watching the evening news and they were showing the apartments being torn down. The Owner had no comment and no mention of the “expert”.

This administration reminds me of that building ownership. Buying time with quick superficial fixes (lime to mask the smell, mudding over cracks, paying someone to tell the City “it hasn’t collapsed yet”) and all the time collecting rent and milking the situation for every penny they could before throwing up their hands as things fall down and lamenting; “who knew?”. There is always someone willing to enable them for a few bucks.

[twocoach]

A little off the topic, but instead of bailing out the airlines themselves, what if we hired all these workers that WE ALL want to protect/help and started a nationwide initiative to move to greener energy options? This is the perfect time to do something large scale like that since we are already spending money like crazy and handcuffing future generations..at least do it for something more worthwhile than saving billionaire airline stakeholders ass. New airlines will form if it is a profitable business now and moving forward. I doubt it would take very long tbh.

Hire them to do what? Where? Paid for by what? Insured by whom?

[jfish26]

A little off the topic, but instead of bailing out the airlines themselves, what if we hired all these workers that WE ALL want to protect/help and started a nationwide initiative to move to greener energy options? This is the perfect time to do something large scale like that since we are already spending money like crazy and handcuffing future generations..at least do it for something more worthwhile than saving billionaire airline stakeholders ass. New airlines will form if it is a profitable business now and moving forward. I doubt it would take very long tbh.

Hire them to do what? Where? Paid for by what? Insured by whom?

I would guess that wind turbine manufacture and maintenance isn't so different from aircraft.