I knew about this a while back. Local landscaper is busier than ever and hired folks and took over $200k in tax money. I used them for one project years ago and they were just criminals/crooks. Tried to stiff me on a dead tree and I filed on the BBB. I told them I was required to pay cash and got no receipt, and they then claimed that it wasn't Jones Landscaping that had done the work, but just some employees on their own. I screen shotted it along with a copy of my bank statement and the texts with the owner from when we arranged the job and told them if they made any more false claims, I was sending all of that to the IRS. Never heard another word....

It's all in the plan.

My understanding is that this deal has added up to 950 billion dollars. That doesn’t include stimulus money, or the unemployment bonuses. That’s a lot of billions.

Again, my opinion doesn’t matter, because it already happened. I’m not in favor of kicking the can down the road for generation after generation. I was never in favor of any type of shutdown. These sons of bitches spend our money as fast as they can.

I understand that not doing it would have seriously hurt the velocity of money. But, doing what they did is just a can kick. At some point you have to stop the bleeding.

I don’t blame anyone for taking it. I blame those that offered it.

Define need in this statement, I didnt "need" it. I could have layed off 70 percent, ground it out and it really would not have changed my life one bit. I would still have bought a boat..... I needed to get it because my competitors were getting it and if they were gonna be flush with cash and be able to pay top dollar to employees, make improvements etc then I'm stupid to not get it. To quote Vito Corleone "your enemy gets strong on what you leave behind" lol I dont know who else said it but it is a truth. And as to those fancy trucks and houses I suspect that the same ones with those now had them before. I dont question when a business owners buys [censored] like that. What I question is how joe blow buys [censored] like that. That's what makes no sense.

In full disclosure there were 2 problems, the initial 8 weeks that went to 24. If it had been 24 weeks to begin with business could have managed it better. The last round of ppp in january was unwarranted in Texas because we were so close to open but giving money to shut down states only would never get them open.

Rapid med has 2 locations here. Each location received 450,000.....
I guess people were not sick during the pandemic and the emergency care places had to shut down.......

This. exactly- I was in the same situation as you.

Sheep being lead to slaughter.

Boy this one is certainly one of those "well from my standpoint I see it this way" kind of deals. I hate it for all that were negatively impacted by the pandemic. Hope you make a full recovery soon.
Wonder if I say enough nice things I'll get offered a ride in the "new ride".

Peanut wages.

What would the cost of unemployment be if you would have lost 50 percent of the small business that relied on this program. Those people would still be out of work and on government teet. You would be paying for them thru sept and if my guess is right even longer. The financial ramifications would be devastating for the economy. I think the lesson here should be slamming the breaks on the economy is a bad idea. We just aren't built to do that. I said it early on and I'll say it again, body count be damned you have to March forward, period.

There's no doubt what you say has some truth but you also said this:
"I needed to get it because my competitors were getting it and if they were gonna be flush with cash and be able to pay top dollar to employees, make improvements etc then I'm stupid to not get it." These are the remarks that are a bit difficult to get past.

Man, I wish old Paycheck was still around

One possibility is that the government can start doing a small set of random audits on those that received checks. Payee should be able to show how the funds were used for paycheck protection. If they can show it, forgive the loan. If they cant show it, consider it a loan with interest. Keep doing audits as long as they are discovering fraud. Might even be a self-funding program.

Why is it difficult to get past, its reality. The origins of the program were to basically use our payroll delivery structure to deliver benefits in an efficient manner, if you recall there were people calling unemployment office for weeks trying to get thru. We didn't write the rules, nobody asked me what I thought, i just played the game by the rules they put forth. The key to making the program work for you was to be able to function in some basic manner as to break even through the time period spending what you had to spend to qualify for forgiveness. If you were able to generate enough revenue to do so then basically it became free money so to speak. Generating the revenue during the shut down was the hard part but again we are good with calculators generally. Throw in a bit of creativity and you got paid. Truth is if I'd been allowed to operate in a normal manner I would have made more money and probably worked less. I could really burn your steak if I told you it's a non taxable event so I wont tell you that.....lol