Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/16/airlines-want-50-billion-fede.html
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Whatever happened to a little something called “personal responsibility?”
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Despite the fact corporations are (apparently) “people” the notion of a corporation ever being held responsible for its actions and choices appears to be a fantasy.
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Don’t they have bootstraps?
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“Personal responsibility” from the perspective of “make sure your business is prepared for a September 11th level drop in business” is a tall ask, but yes - I think it’s important that bailout money being contingent on some due diligence - ensuring these companies took appropriate action when the outbreak was identified and as traffic dropped off.
Not to mention airlines showing they’ll be unable to continue without the bailout, versus “we need this money so we can continue to pretend we don’t need to adapt to the situation like nothing happened”.
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Link that idea to Heathrow’s promise to go carbon neutral - apart from the aeroplanes.
They really do need to change their game.
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First provide proof that they’ve cancelled all top management benefits and raises until they’re paid-off.
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Do they have any carry-on ?
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and an executive pay cut to 20 x average worker pay
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It’s going to take humans a lot longer to recover from global warming than from Covid 19. If we just stopped flying so much anyway, for good- it would buy more time for the atmosphere.
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So is this democratic socialism or social democracy?
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This is tyranny struggling against a socialist uprising.
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There are also discussions to assist the airports - and the concession businesses located at airports. Doesn’t do the public much good if the airlines are fine - but the airports went bankrupt.
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Is there no Chapter 11 ?
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I think I should probably get $50 billion too.
You can line up behind me.
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Very true…though I do feel this is not really anything to do with their “actions and choices” does it?
To me…THIS is the moment when an industry should be propped up and aided. We need the airline industry to remain afloat long term.
The cruise ship industry on the other hand can die in a watery grave IMO.
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Not that the Trump administration would do this, but any airline that has failed to put together a plan for this scenario should probably be bailed out only if they accept an independent management team placed by the government until such a time as the business gets healthy again. During the temporary public ownership period, the airline will not take profits from their customers, only enough charge over cost to make the necessary investments to become more resilient to these kinds of foreseeable events.
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Stop it - you are making too much sense.
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Instead of bailing out a few airlines, why don’t we just buy one outright and run it as a public enterprise? @CongenitalOptimist that would be something a democratic socialist government would do.
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I think expecting them to have planned for something like this is unrealistic. But you feel free to hold people and companies to such standards.
