Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
Big corporations begging taxpayer bailouts and then using them on bonuses and dividends. It's a humongous waste of money that does nothing but enrich the wealthy. Most of the time it doesn't even save jobs.
If, as a large corporate, you want a bailout from the taxpayer, then the government/state will take a portion of your shares in escrow, equivalent in value to the amount of money you're asking for or getting. Those shares (in case of publicly traded companies) are withdrawn from the stock market, become non-voting shares and are frozen at their price at that time. Within a to-be-determined time period (five years maybe) the corporation, if it gets profitable again, can buy back all or part of the shares from the government at that price per share - thus returning money to the taxpayer. Anything that's left after five years, the government can do with as it sees fit - sell them at market price (thus recovering the spent money), or keep them use them to vote/control the company.
There probably is a lot wrong with this proposal. But something needs to be done to discourage big business from hoovering up taxpayer money like it's going out of fashion. Most of the time the taxpayer is getting absolutely no value from that spend.
No bailouts without an equivalent equity transfer to the public. If you want a bailout you need to grant the same amount of stock to the government in exchange.
Isn't that pretty much the short version of what I said?
If so, it should begin with that.
The problem with freezing them at their price is that that essentially becomes an interest-free loan to the company that partakes in the system.
The interest needs to be somewhat punitive.
I would say three points above the federal rate compounded daily, and they have to pay off all of the accumulated interest before they can start buying their stocks back.
I don't necessarily have a problem with it being an interest-free loan, if it serves to keep a business over water and saves jobs. To me that's an appropriate use of taxpayer funds. I'm all for taxpayer subsidies if they are balance-positive to the taxpayer, i.e. jobs are preserved and the subsidies result in meaningful economic activity.
What's bad is when otherwise profitable businesses use threats of job cuts and closures to obtain taxpayer bailouts so they can keep paying big bonuses and shareholder dividends. A lot of that happened through COVID, and the taxpayer threw billions at big business for very little in return. So maybe restrictions on layoffs and such would need to be written into a system like that. The punitive aspects need to incentivise the intended behaviour and strongly disincentivise the wrong behaviour.