So you're saying that if we give money to the corporations, then we should nationalize them?

Interesting idea

 

No, just correcting your ignorance.

 

With your superior ignorance.

ok buddy

 

Cold, hard reality: some industries are so critical to the economy (like us for example) that the cascading costs of not bailing them out are far worse than the bailouts. There's nothing fair or equitable about it, it just comes down to what can we not live without.

Politicians need to keep the economic golden goose alive.

Government bureaucrats need to keep the tax base goose alive.

 

Nope, the Constitution disagrees.

Not to mention that the basic law of economics explain why what you have described is a horrible idea.

 

what?
what part of the constitution was infringed?
what laws of economics?

 

Bailing out business (or people for that matter) isn't authorized in the Constitution.

As far as economics, it is a bad idea to do so because it is paid for by either borrowed or printed money, both of which are harmful to the economy. And it creates what is known as a moral hazard. -- https://fee.org/articles/the-moral-h...of-government/

 

Promote the general welfare...?

 

Constitution doesn't forbid it, and it reasonably falls under prudent governance per both precedent and the constitution... the constitution doesn't authorize you to fly airplanes either.

I'd give the airlines a pass on moral hazard on this one, because they were mostly positioned to weather a 9/11 type event or other typical downturn. Loss of essentially all revenue for 4-8 months was not what anyone would have considered a plausible scenario two months ago. There's no precedent for this.

And the airlines are a very key economic pillar... the economy will not come back without them, or at least not as anything recognizable and certainly not within a decade. Too many other sectors would have to completely collapse and then re-invent themselves, or be replaced by something new. That would take 10-30+ years and result in global human misery beyond reckoning. And war, don't forget that part... plague and famine don't tend to ride very far without their two brothers.

 

That's not what it means. At the time it was written that phrase meant that anything the government did had to be for the general welfare of all people (as opposed to the welfare of a few or upper class).