The application process for PPP was designed so that the vast majority of small businesses would not know how to apply, and the things they asked you to attest to would make many small businesses balk at applying. https://twitter.com/SoulRevision/status/1292869549423902722

Right now, Congress is considering a simplified, almost automatic, forgiveness process for small businesses that took less than $150,000 in loans. This is too late. I know many people who were afraid to take the loans because they were unsure of the forgiveness process.

The entire thing was set up so that people with lawyers and accountants would find the process easy and fairly routine and everyone else would find it baffling and scary.

It was a system that was designed to give money to those who already had enough of it to navigate the system.

There are several studies that suggest that the most effective way to give away money is to just...give away money.

We should have already done that, but it’s not too late.

By the way, the required certification that I think put most people off was this one:

“Current economic uncertainty makes this loan request necessary to support the ongoing operations of the applicant.”

People read that and thought, WELL, okay, things are tight and I’m scared but is this NECESSARY? I can probably get by.

This is a more lengthy, lawyerly analysis of those terms. https://www.lanepowell.com/Our-Insights/202404/PPP-Certification-Uncertainty-About-the-Meaning-of-Uncertainty

If you require a certification that only people who have lawyers would properly understand, you are not helping small businesses.

PPP is the quintessential US giveaway

* funnels money to the wealthy
* ones who need it most are least able to apply
* massive giveaway to private entities who administer it
* rules change 4x after program is rolled out

So definitely be mad at the millionaires and billionaires who looted the PPP fund, but be especially mad at the people who set the system up so that millionaires and billionaires would get the lions share of the money.

And I haven’t even talked about how there are rules barring applicants who were convicted of felonies / are on parole and how, in a world where you know that the criminal justice system is itself racially discriminatory, this makes PPP racially discriminatory.