The rainy day has come and we have no choice but to save them?
This is tough. Businesses are shut down by an order of Government. If they fail it won't be because they couldn't compete on the open market. Ordering businesses closed through no fault of their own effectively puts government on the hook for their well being, even if they kept lousy books. It's kind of like eminent domain. On the flip side, as you said, it's funny money we're paying them with. I don't have answers.
This crisis is exacerbating already deep fissures between rural and urban parts of the country. What we have the potential for turning into a couple months from now scares the [censored] out of me. This is going to test the unity of the country, no doubt.
I agree; that's the crux of the issue. We can either let everything fail through no fault of the owners, take a huge hit to GDP, and spend years crawling out of the hole. Or, we can make it rain money to essentially put everything on pause until either it passes or we figure out treatments to severely lessen the health issues from it (just because you don't die, doesn't mean you won't have any health repercussions from it).
Even if we decided to open everything back up, a whole lot of people are going to be (rightfully) cautious, and it won't snap back to normal overnight.
Yea... there are no good answers :-/
If you ever find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.
