[HN Gopher] Booking.com gives EUR28m in bonuses to three top exe...
___________________________________________________________________
Booking.com gives EUR28m in bonuses to three top execs; Took EUR65m
in State aid
Author : jsiepkes
Score : 458 points
Date : 2021-05-28 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nltimes.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (nltimes.nl)
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| It's interesting the CFO got more than 3x the CEO, and more than
| 2x CEO + VP. Does anyone know the reasoning behind that?
|
| It seems a bit shady to me in general for a CFO to be paid large
| performance bonuses.
| Finnucane wrote:
| CFO writes the checks?
| vmception wrote:
| The quartermaster runs the show on a pirate ship. The captain
| gets all the fanfare.
| papito wrote:
| The CEO and the VP get the taste of the wig to not make much
| noise.
| nielsbot wrote:
| "taste of the wig"? I don't know that saying.. is it "wine"?
| ska wrote:
| I suspect a typo for "vig", short for "vigorish".
| nielsbot wrote:
| Cheers. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vigorish
| ska wrote:
| For the most part, C level comp of this type is defined ahead
| of time with the board, and based on formulas/targets that are
| often tied pretty closely to job function. Given that; it's not
| a big stretch to see how income like this ("for nothing") might
| factor into CFO far more than the others.
| knuthsat wrote:
| I'm not sure if I just can't find this information or if people
| exploiting government aid are just silent about it.
|
| These things happen because there are people who are trained to
| exploit these situations.
|
| But there are definitely levels to it.
|
| One way to do it is to just start a bunch of projects that will
| fail in countries that cannot meet their EU funds quota.
|
| https://cohesiondata.ec.europa.eu/overview
|
| You look at the data here. Figure out which EU countries can't
| find enough validly looking projects to get the funds. Go to that
| country with some initial funding and start legitimate looking
| business that will be funded by EU (mostly). Create legitimate
| expenses, even though the business will never be profitable and
| leech the EU funds through your personal accounts at some non-
| suspicious rate.
|
| Involving more players makes everything look more legitimate and
| when things fail, it's just how capitalism works. You can spend
| decades leeching on the money.
|
| On several occasions I met some fairly competent looking aliens
| and eventually realized this was the pattern that they wanted to
| exploit.
|
| These things are also done on a personal level (for example, a
| psychologist wants to open a practice that will work with groups
| of children and the project is well-written, costs are well
| defined and EU gives most of the money and the person just does
| what they described at a lower cost - spending the money on
| services that will indirectly make the individual richer).
|
| Another example is non-profits in EU. Small and large, they just
| suck out so much money, do the things they say will do, but the
| costs trickle down to the executives through various channels
| (for example, you can hire individuals to educate your employees
| but they charge you for fictional stuff and you collect the spent
| funds through some other way).
| varispeed wrote:
| There needs to be done something about situations where companies
| pay minimum wage and at the same time register millions or
| billions in profits (and then making artificial loss while moving
| money offshore).
|
| It's controversial, but I think minimum wage should be directly
| tied to a given company revenue.
| sebmellen wrote:
| In the article, it's mentioned that they took EUR100m in state
| aid -- even more egregious than the mere EUR65m they took from
| the Netherlands alone. And that, while Booking.com gets
| discounted tax rates and strong-arms the Dutch government to pay
| even less through an "innovation box" [0]. Not good at all.
|
| > _In 2018 alone, the company received a tax discount of $435
| million in the Netherlands, or about EUR385 million. Thanks to
| this bait from the state, not only will Booking's headquarters
| remain in the Netherlands, but all income generated worldwide by
| the company will immediately flow to the Netherlands before being
| taxed elsewhere._
|
| [0]: https://happyhotelier.com/2020/04/18/booking-com/
| Jiocus wrote:
| The title is almost underwhelming in severity (which is a
| refreshing break from sensationalistic headlines),
|
| _"[EUR28m in bonuses] even after taking three billion euros in
| loans last year, and 100 million euros in State aid including 65
| million from the Netherlands. The company also let go of
| thousands of people during the coronavirus pandemic."_
|
| Booking.com isn't alone engaging in these practices. Many
| corporations seem to defend these payouts, by suggesting that
| these executives have gracefully managed the organisation during
| the pandemic distress. Such statements aren't very reassuring,
| because they feel more like sound bites of opinion, rather than
| arguments that can be debated and examined.
|
| How many jobs could they have saved with 28 million euros?
| donmcronald wrote:
| IMHO the aid should have been loans only and executive bonuses
| should have gone to the government as collateral. If the
| company pays back the loan, the executives get their bonus.
| [deleted]
| ska wrote:
| It's going to be interesting to see analysis of various "covid
| response" policies in terms of their intended vs. actual
| consequence.
|
| I'm guessing that countries that tied corporate money to payroll
| somehow are going to see better impacts than those that didn't.
|
| There's also a lot of weird incentives and corner cases.
| Especially in countries where states/provinces/whatever have a
| lot of autonomy, there is a ton of variation too.
| sjaak wrote:
| This needs a trigger warning for the Dutch people reading this
| site.
|
| Shameless. Totally shameless.
| jtwaleson wrote:
| It's not like we're proud of booking. Dark patterns in their
| product, horrible tech stack. As a software engineer there
| you'll get paid 30% over market value to work on Perl in a
| dysfunctional org.
|
| This bonus round is just another stain on an already bad
| reputation. Their CMO tried to start some nice PR recently,
| must be pretty mad now :)
| necovek wrote:
| It seems that most of that EUR28M was "mostly" paid out in
| "shares": iow, minimal cash was transferred. That may make it
| both better or worse for everyone else at Booking.com (if shares
| go back in value as travel gets reinstated, it will effectively
| be more than that), but the aid itself was not used to cover
| these bonuses. Basically, Booking.com shareholders have
| redistributed their shares to a couple of employees.
|
| If, otoh, Booking.com goes bust, the value of these bonuses would
| plummet. If they attempted to cash in, it's likely value would go
| down too.
|
| Not going into the moral background of this, but the title and
| comments here were misleading to me.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The reason why Booking.com had no money and needed a bailout is
| because they spent billions on stock buybacks.
|
| So when a company that does lots of buy backs later issues
| stock to pay bonuses, they might as well be directly using cash
| from the bailout.
|
| Edit: For concrete numbers, Booking.com spent 5.5 BILLION on
| stock buybacks in the first half of 2019.
| necovek wrote:
| Buybacks are not mentioned in this article, and you quote a
| number from 2019, which is, to the best of my knowledge, pre-
| pandemic.
|
| If you are saying that they foresaw the pandemic and
| government grants, well...
|
| Now, I wouldn't be surprised that they were doing that even
| in 2020, considering they were also taking out $3B in loans
| (in addition to $100M of subsidies) to maintain the share
| value or reinvesting in themselves when others had lower
| trust in them, but when all of these numbers are stacked
| together, this article title is obviously click-baiting ("Top
| execs receive EUR25M of stocks while company borrows EUR3B
| and gets EUR100M in grants" is not something too much fuss
| will be raised about).
|
| The bigger problem IMO is the regular subsidies they receive
| for "innovating" (somebody here brought up a figure of >$400M
| of tax subsidies a year).
|
| I do agree that top executive remuneration is commonly out of
| hand, but I think that applies even to "regular folk": I find
| it unfair that my programming salary is like 7x the average
| salary (10x the median) in my "developing world" country.
| Both of those problems equally need to be fixed. While I may
| be providing suitably more economic benefit to my employer, I
| am not "worth" that much more: the incentives and values are
| messed up somewhere.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| Your economic worth is well defined by supply and demand.
| It is incoherent to say you are not "worth" the salary you
| are paid; if that were in fact the case, your salary would
| be lower, or you would eventually not have your job.
|
| Is this fair? I would argue yes. Economic worth is a
| transparent situation, and it is rather clear that by
| positioning a career towards high demand work, anyone can
| improve their station in life. This is much more fair
| compared to some alternate systems where winners and losers
| are arbitrary, and opaquely determined by politics.
| missedthecue wrote:
| If you would like companies to just keep billions on hand for
| totally unpredictable events that shut down the global
| economy, why don't you start by writing to your congressman
| asking him to create legislation repealing the Accumulated
| Earnings Tax, which punishes businesses for holding too much
| money.
| jiofih wrote:
| The company stock actually shot up during the pandemic, from a
| low of $1400 to over $2200, which was unthinkable before. It's
| unlikely to go higher.
| GordonS wrote:
| If we're really going to insist on bailing out private companies
| (rather than letting them fail and using the money to help those
| left without work) - then surely these bailouts should come with
| rules that prevent the money from basically being embezzled by
| top management?
| sdeframond wrote:
| I know at least one French consulting company did the same
| (Amaris). They basically gave the benefits they made from state
| aid straight to their shareholders. And at the same time they
| laid people off.
|
| My guess is: most companies who could do this did. No conspiracy,
| just plain greed.
| amir734jj wrote:
| WOW. That's all I have to say.
| kaliali wrote:
| Well blame the politicians who left loopholes in the laws to be
| exploited. Or blame yourselves for falling for the same stupid
| trick over and over.
|
| If everything they did was legal and by the book you shouldn't be
| blaming them, you should blame the lawmakers that allowed it to
| happen. There are no excuses when you write and vote on laws for
| millions of people to abide by.
| Ekaros wrote:
| 28M bonuses on after probably worst year in their history? How
| can the system be this broken?
| forgithubs wrote:
| And yet, people still vote for the same kind of politicians.
|
| I don't blame the execs, I would have done the same.
| dbg31415 wrote:
| Likely bonus criteria were set up in advance, but governments
| handing companies money certainly didn't hurt. Nor did having the
| people who run the company choose to award themselves bonuses.
| But look... end of the day here, if you give money to businesses
| don't expect the people running those businesses to do anything
| that isn't selfish with the money.
|
| If you give a bum on the street $5, he's going to spend that
| money on himself. If you give a CEO $5M, he's going to spend that
| money on himself too. I don't see why any sane person would
| expect anything different. Moral of the store is don't give money
| to people... not bums on the street, or CEOs. Just don't do it.
| You'll be let down every time.
| Krisjohn wrote:
| When the poor receive benefits, some people get upset if they buy
| iPhones or big screen TVs.
|
| This is the first time the rich have experienced the same
| disapproval. I bet they're really surprised.
| __turbobrew__ wrote:
| Covid has got me thinking about the government's role in social
| welfare.
|
| Providing social welfare through money allows for people to
| misallocate the money or skim off the top of the money. For the
| vast majority of people their covid stimulation money did not go
| into their pockets, it went to their landlord or their mortgage
| holder resulting in a massive wealth transfer from public funds
| to banks and those who own land.
|
| I think the government should directly supply the basic needs of
| its citizens instead of using money as an intermediary for
| supplying social welfare. Money is only a means to an end for
| obtaining the basic necessities to live: you cannot eat a dollar
| bill for nutrition or sleep under a dollar bill for shelter.
| Government provided housing and food should be available to any
| citizen -- no questions asked. At that point you can get rid of
| all welfare programs since the government is directly supplying
| the basic necessities for those in need.
|
| People would still be incentivized to work in order to obtain
| luxuries which are not supplied by the government: a private
| house, travelling, a car, etc.
|
| Stories like this further affirm that handing out money is not a
| good way for the government to provide welfare.
| hervature wrote:
| How much food and what quality? Do I get to ask for tomahawk
| steaks every meal and an extra one to bring home to my dog? Is
| everyone entitled to an avocado or just those that live close
| to an avocado farm? There is no easy answer to this and you bet
| a government mandated system would be heavily lobbied to
| include/exclude certain things. For housing, do you get to
| decide where you live? Or does the government set up a massive
| new settlement of block housing in the cheapest part of the
| country? Do I get to ask for an apartment close to my family or
| do they just add me to the next unit available?
|
| We can argue about how many funds should be directed to certain
| programs, but SNAP and no taxes on food essentially is what you
| are suggesting while allowing for individual choice. Same for
| housing. The US basically gives your first house away for free
| which is part of the reason housing is so expensive.
| clusterfish wrote:
| > How much food and what quality?
|
| Food stamps make this back into a "how much money" question
| without getting into execs pockets.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Food stamps are degrading and paternalistic, though, by
| design. Their whole point is "we won't give you real money
| because we don't trust you to not misuse it."
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Eh, there is a reason for this mistrust along with the
| limits on what you can buy with them in US. My wife used
| to work in Jewel and she has no end of stories about
| people and snap cards. Maybe they are paternalistic,
| because, well, you can't take care of yourself and your
| family. Little help is needed.
| hervature wrote:
| How much money to spend on a decent diet is much easier to
| ask than how many apples and, if the person wants to
| substitute apples, how many pears is that?
| nradov wrote:
| No thanks. I am unwilling to pay taxes to perpetually support
| people who are capable of working but choose not to.
| asdff wrote:
| When did you stop paying taxes? 300 B.C.?
| nradov wrote:
| The key word there is "perpetually". In the US welfare
| payments and other social support programs are usually time
| limited for recipients who aren't disabled.
|
| I have no problem with government supports for people who
| actually work but still can't afford basic necessities.
| Just don't ask me to pay for non-disabled people to sit
| around all day.
| necovek wrote:
| You are always doing that through all sorts of both minor
| ("she's my uncle's friend") and major corruption ("they
| donated to our campaign, let's give them a contract where
| they simply take a cut on the deal with the provider"): a
| lot of people are "employed" but only "sit around all
| day".
|
| _If_ you want to fix that, you should be going into
| politics or law and law enforcement.
| RHSeeger wrote:
| > For the vast majority of people their covid stimulation money
| did not go into their pockets, it went to their landlord or
| their mortgage holder
|
| And then the money that _would_ have gone to pay those bills
| went into their pocket; and then to presumably pay some other
| bills (food, etc). Paying for a place to live is an expected
| expense that most people have. Helping people pay that expense
| helps those people. To pretend the only ones helped by it are
| the landlords/banks is ridiculous.
|
| > Government provided housing and food should be available to
| any citizen -- no questions asked. At that point you can get
| rid of all welfare programs since the government is directly
| supplying the basic necessities for those in need.
|
| No, you can't. As an example, what about someone that is paying
| off a house and is in a downturn. Your solution is to have them
| stop paying for the house (lose it to the bank) and move into
| government housing. So, in exchange for a couple months of help
| with their bills, they get to discard their ownership in their
| house.
| clairity wrote:
| that creates its own perverse incentives. instead, we as
| citizens should do one thing keenly and singularly, and that is
| to make representatives regulate markets toward fairness and
| competitiveness, and against consolidation and regulatory
| capture. markets work best when there are dozens of mostly mid-
| sized competitors, not monopolized. capitalism is predicated on
| such competitive and fair markets, otherwise the capital
| allocation function doesn't work (as we've seen for the past
| 50+ years). do not be distracted even a single bit on culture
| war topics (including covid).
| SubiculumCode wrote:
| "For the vast majority of people their covid stimulation money
| did not go into their pockets, it went to their landlord or
| their mortgage holder " you have evidence for that, other than
| people catching up on late rent/mortgage payments?
|
| Governments miss-allocate things all the time, and its a lack
| of trust of citizens to do what is in their own best interest.
| It is a position that really limits the utility of government
| as a source of stimulus by a desire for control, a desire that
| a free people do not want to give in to.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| A lot of PPP loans in my industry were passed through to the
| owners as dividends/profit taking, as they didn't actually need
| the loans since we were all busy. Small/medium business owners
| in slightly affected industries got RICH last year.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _Small /medium business owners in slightly affected
| industries got RICH last year._
|
| Not to be that guy, but what if that was the real idea behind
| giving the loans? I have to confess that living in Wisconsin
| has left me jaded with respect to our leadership. The whole
| Foxconn experience still informs the way i look at new
| proposals from our leadership. It's become very difficult for
| me to believe that some of these politicians aren't fully
| aware of what they are doing and who they will be benefiting
| prior to taking the actions they champion.
|
| They hold the poor hostage to their greed and the greed of
| their cronies. "Let me and my cronies take XX dollars or we
| won't give out a dime to those families that just got laid
| off." It's sickening.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I believe it was a side-effect rather than a cause. The PPP
| loan program did end up helping a lot of businesses, and to
| be fair, there wasn't really time to pick and choose who
| gets what.
| necovek wrote:
| To add another wrinkle to your "proposal", the cost of moving
| is also very real. If a money helps you remain in your current
| home for a couple of months that allows you re-establish your
| income stream without having to both spend money on moving and
| disrupt your life entirely (imagine having kids switch schools
| along the way too).
|
| If you are going to help people in need, the best way to do it
| is with money. Sure, _some_ will misuse it, but we should never
| optimise for the worst case scenario, but for the most common
| one.
| ljm wrote:
| > For the vast majority of people their covid stimulation money
| did not go into their pockets, it went to their landlord or
| their mortgage holder
|
| At a strong risk of over-simplifying, this is a problem solved
| by regulation. The problem is that you're suggesting we
| regulate the average citizen by replacing their money with
| rationed supplies.
|
| You've got it all wrong, the average citizen is entitled to
| freedom within the bounds of the law. The institutions and the
| corporate abstractions are entitled to regulation and more
| restricted bounds of law, they are not entitled to more freedom
| than a human being.
|
| Our current situation with corporate power is evidence of a
| total failure of Western capitalist ideals. We've fucked up
| worse than communism because communism (at least with the USSR)
| ended, but we fund and support the same atrocities ourselves
| nonetheless, with our supposedly superior ideals.
| freetanga wrote:
| Five minutes later you have contracts for 5 dollar bananas and
| 4 dollar apples in every government...
|
| I like the idea but I much rather trust individuals (some of
| which will misuse funds) than politicians.
| Sharlin wrote:
| This... has been tried, many times, and been found to not work
| too well. First off, unless you socialize the whole economy
| (well, that has been tried as well), government-provided food
| is still bought from _somebody_ , by the government, and
| typically this is seen as a superfluous and inefficient extra
| step.
|
| Second, people _very much like_ going to a supermarket and
| being able to pick their groceries and other necessities, and
| having the government distribute some sort of standardized
| alimentary packages to those in need does not work too well.
| You could have whole government-run supermarkets with their
| government-run logistics chains, but again, historically that
| hasn 't worked too well (and I'm saying this as a European
| liberal leftist!) That said, there _are_ some specific goods
| and services where a single-payer system works fairly well,
| such as medicine.
|
| Third, government-supplied housing has, of course been tried as
| well [1], and housing projects like that often have a tendency
| to turn into slums sooner or later. It can be done right (first
| rule: you _cannot_ isolate poor people into their own
| neighborhoods! [2]) but it 's highly nontrivial because of,
| among other things, NIMBYism.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-income_housing
| colordrops wrote:
| Has it been tried without means testing in a capitalist
| system though? Where only the most basic necessities are
| provided to anykne who wants them, and you can buy whatever
| else you want beyond that?
| atoav wrote:
| I lived in Vienna and there the city ownes a good punch of
| social housing since the 50s. Only thing: these houses are
| built at a good standard and still cheaper to live in than
| other comparable offers. They also cleverly mixed them in
| theoughout the whole city. This means the money they invested
| here not only reduces rents overall, it also provides housing
| to people in need while at the same time counterbalancing the
| otherwise naturally evolving contrast between rich/poor
| districts. ll of this benefits the social climate of the city
| overall because people are not segregated into their own
| districts as much.
|
| Vinnea was repeatedly voted to be the city most worth living
| in in world.
|
| So:
|
| - built social houses to a higher standard not a lower one
|
| - Don't build blocks of social houses in one area but mix
| them in throughout the city (e.g. mandate this by law
| whenever new buildings are built)
|
| - the rent should be lower than average and the same
| independent of the neighbourhood
|
| - the waiting lists for this flats should priorize people in
| need who are poor, minorities, ill, students, single mothers,
| but occasionaly mix in people from wealthier background to
| avoid social stigma. In vienna even wealthy people see it as
| an achievement to get into one of these flats.
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > I think the government should directly supply the basic needs
| of its citizens
|
| Suppose you give people $100 worth of food stamps rather than
| $100 cash. Let's assume people make good use of those food
| stamps, and let's also assume they have at least $100 to their
| name to start with. They still end up $100 better off. The
| landlords can still ramp up the rent by $100, no?
| ralph84 wrote:
| Directly via bailouts and indirectly via inflation, COVID was the
| biggest wealth transfer to the rich in history.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Most of the 99% are proud of being vaccinated, so they don't
| seem to have a problem with the situation.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Not rich here. Wife's company got COVID loans. They were
| forgiven. Company had to prove money was spent on rent,
| salaries, benefits. Company didn't make money on it. Employees
| were able to keep their jobs. No bonuses involved there.
| mdorazio wrote:
| Yes, and what did those employees who would have otherwise
| been unemployed spend their money on? Likely rent was the #1
| item, thus transferring wealth from tax dollars to asset
| holders.
| Spivak wrote:
| This is not what anyone means when they talk about wealth
| transfers. Yes rent is a huge issue on its own eat the new
| feudal lords and all that but the problem of people using
| their wages and salaries funded by taxpayers to pay for
| things they we're paying for already is something totally
| different than inflation devaluing dollars, which is the
| primary asset held by low-middle income people, plus
| wholesale transfering it via bailouts to the already
| wealthy.
|
| If the gov't took money from taxpayers to give to companies
| to pay worker salaries to pay rent and you squint a bit
| that's just workers paying rent semi-collectively which on
| a macro scale is like... fine. Not good. But fine.
| comboy wrote:
| It's a bit more complex, but even avoiding how much value
| pleople get from paying their rent, only as much was
| transferred as there would be empty vacancies from people
| relocating elsewhere (or losing their homes and having
| nowhere to go). If elsewhere, they also pay rent to
| somebody. Plus somebody else would pay the rent when they
| are gone, just slightly lower (probably). That difference
| in rent price would be amount being transferred then.
|
| Long story short it's more likely that they were able to
| buy other necessities and more food than they could without
| a job.
|
| Your argument would work though if these were high paying
| jobs - that would likely only result in fewer luxuries
| being bought.
|
| If money ends up in the hands of employees, then
| statistically by definition most of them are not the 1% and
| money equals higher level of living instead of more useless
| stuff.
| derefr wrote:
| I think the idea isn't that it was a net transfer from
| _individual working-class people_ to the capital class,
| but rather a net transfer _from city /state/country
| treasuries_ to the capital class.
|
| How much of that translates to the rich getting richer,
| depends on what proportion of those treasuries' funds
| originally came from taxes on the rich, vs. taxes on
| everyone else.
| comboy wrote:
| The way I see it, they state money belongs to everyone
| (bear with me), the transfer between working and capital
| class happens when it is not distributed evenly, which is
| what happened at booking.com and is happening quite often
| because those who work don't have time to research new
| regulations, don't have experts to analyze them and some
| yet other people to fill out necessary documents to get
| money from the state.
|
| That's why I believe many laws like "let's help THOSE
| people in need" end up on a giant pile that's mostly
| getting abused by those who have time for it (of course
| there are exceptions).
| birken wrote:
| I'm sure the employees would much rather have been laid off
| to stick it to the asset holders.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I have come to realize that many people are haunted by
| the constant fear that someone somewhere might be making
| a profit.
|
| I think it's a great thing and a credit to our
| institutions that millions of citizens of my country
| weren't evicted last March and April. Who cares if
| landlords got paid for rent or if a bank received a
| mortgage payment?
| manquer wrote:
| With weaker demand rents would have actually fallen a lot
| more than now. That in turn would have an impact on asset
| prices in the long term.
|
| Will it be fairer to employees ? I don't know, there will
| be lot more pain for employees without government
| intervention.
|
| However with Quantitative Easing or bailouts and COVID
| loans means the rich are not paying the same price as
| well, that is why rich are becoming richer, poor suffer
| either way.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| Are we saying a rent payment is a "transfer of wealth"? I'm
| not invested in real estate, but I imagine many people in
| real estate were just as impacted. Don't you likely need to
| pay towards a mortgage and put some aside for capital and
| day to day maintenance?
|
| Your comment is written as if a rent payment is a transfer
| from one person to directly to someone else's savings
| account. I'm not convinced this is true.
| jiofih wrote:
| Not at all. Their equity remains the same, and chances
| are you can stay solvent for a couple years if you own a
| second property. It just means they get to earn 1/30 less
| rent (in its original meaning) over the whole mortgage.
| [deleted]
| oblio wrote:
| I think he's saying that at a certain level of wealth,
| you don't need mortgages anymore. And especially with
| super low interest rates - bonus points if the interest
| rate is fixed - mortgages are more of an investment than
| a liability.
|
| So people with a ton of money can just buy a lot of
| property which they then rent out. Renovation work can be
| delayed and property values have only went up in the past
| 30 years or so (minus the financial crisis, which in the
| greater scheme of things turned out to be just a blip).
| So they have an ever appreciating asset that's a constant
| stream of revenue. Double-win.
|
| Which makes this whole multiple-bankruptcy thing for the
| former US president even the more baffling :-))
| bredren wrote:
| The great recession resulted in the creation of
| Blackstone's Invitation Homes, which is the largest owner
| of single-family rental homes in the US.
|
| Homes that used to be owned and rented locally by
| individuals or small businesses are now rented and
| managed from elsewhere.
|
| Profits resulting from higher rents and cheaper
| maintenance flow to stock holders, creating bad
| incentives. These homes are no longer rotating into the
| market for sale, reducing inventory.
|
| Even for rental homes rented by local owners, the
| increased rent due to the commercialization of rented
| residential housing created conditions for everyone's
| rent to go up.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/04/magazine/wall-street-
| land...
| deathtraphomes wrote:
| Ah, I moved into one of invitation homes a few years ago.
| Looked nice when we drove up, didn't think about why all
| the windows were open when we signed paperwork.
|
| Their negligence nearly killed my family, and left us
| with life long injuries.
|
| The gas line was leaking natural gas, improper
| installation? the furnace and stove were emoting lethal
| levels of carbon monoxide. Detector was defective.
|
| A portion of the AC fell into the kids room. One wall got
| so hot it burned my wife. Only reason we didn't die is
| smell was so bad we nearly always had all windows open.
|
| At every stage they lied and did what they could to cover
| up problems.
|
| I still recall spending an hour each morning trying to
| wake kids, not realizing we were all being poisoned.
|
| Just last week they tried to settle the matter by paying
| back my deposit if I agreed to Silence, and gave up all
| legal claims.
|
| https://lease.invitationhomes.com/homes/665-cranberry-
| ct-300...
| nradov wrote:
| All homes are always on the market for sale, regardless
| of whether they are listed on the MLS or not. If you see
| one you like there's nothing stopping you from making an
| unsolicited offer to Blackstone's Invitation Homes.
| bredren wrote:
| Invitation Homes raises rents as much as possible.
|
| It seems unlikely a typical landlord would need to raise
| rent at the same rate because they maintain their own
| operations and have no duty to shareholders.
|
| An offer to buy from IH would need to beat IH's own model
| for returns in such a substantial way that it would be
| overpriced and affect comparable home pricing in the
| area.
|
| Thus, it is not similar to making an unsolicited offer to
| some regular home owner.
| ljm wrote:
| But they were paying rent or paying their mortgage before
| it happened too.
|
| All it says is that it's a good thing that the government
| backed you up when you were in trouble. And I'd rather see
| the government back up the poor folk instead of them
| bailing out the stupidly wealthy. It'd cost less money.
| garmaine wrote:
| What did they do with the regular income they had during that
| period that would have gone to rent, salaries, etc.?
| hdhjebebeb wrote:
| you're so close...
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Paid it out as to owners/execs as dividends/bonuses, this
| is what happened in my industry to the companies that took
| PPP loans but had plenty of work and receivables to pay the
| bills. Plenty of PPP money was 'used for payroll' when
| there was already money for payroll, then the company is
| free to do as it wants with it (cash out to owners)
| aeturnum wrote:
| The COVID relief has helped the rich in the same way that the
| mortgage tax deduction 'mostly' helps the rich[1]: the
| majority of the dollars go to aid wealthy people, despite the
| number of non-wealthy beneficiaries being much higher.
|
| [1] https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/358922-mortgage-
| interest...
| Karunamon wrote:
| That always struck me as an ass-backwards way of looking at
| taxes. $100 saved by someone near the poverty line is a big
| deal to them, $100 saved by someone making six figures is
| not near as much. The recent doubling of the standard
| deduction is probably one of the biggest (in terms of
| impact) tax cuts to the lower/middle earners (read: the
| vast majority of people) in a long time.
| aeturnum wrote:
| I agree that poor-er people have much higher marginal
| utility for $1, but I think that observation supports
| this critique!
|
| The 'cost' of spending $1,000,000 on a wealthy person
| should be measured in terms of how much utility less-
| wealthy recipients would get out of that money. In the
| same way, your example with the standard deduction also,
| I think, supports this critique: either standard
| deduction is marginal once you reach a high enough level
| of income, but at lower levels of income it is much, much
| better (and results in higher tax rebates for poor
| people). It's an example of a tax policy that does the
| reverse of the mortgage tax deduction - it becomes less
| proportionally beneficial at higher levels of income.
|
| P.s. I may have misread your comment, and if we are
| actually in agreement I apologize!
| treeman79 wrote:
| Low earners don't pay federal income tax. Bottom 50% make
| up 3% Top 1% paid 40% of taxes.
|
| https://taxfoundation.org/publications/latest-federal-
| income...
| trhway wrote:
| >Wife's company got COVID loans. They were forgiven.
|
| those relatively useful (at least in the cases where it
| wasn't abused/cheated) programs is a minor part and basically
| a window dressing of that multi trillion transfer of wealth
| to the rich. It is just a bone thrown to the populace to
| detract the attention and to derail the public discourse they
| way you just did.
| lmeyerov wrote:
| Sort of. $ can go to payroll, but net revenue is still up by
| PPP amount. So owners can get a performance bonus, and it
| just happens to be the PPP amount. But if there was no PPP,
| there wouldn't have been that extra cash, so less $ for
| bonuses.
|
| This only works if the company was breakeven, or had $
| reserves (eg, VC funded w expectation of ever-growing losses)
| itake wrote:
| the company basically got free labor for 2 months. instead of
| needing to pay employees, the company got to keep its cash
| (and pay them out to the owners).
| anigbrowl wrote:
| That seems ancillary to the GP's point, which was pointing
| out an overall wealth transfer rather than inveighing against
| COVID loans.
| adamrezich wrote:
| watch out, go any further down that train of thought and you'll
| be a "conspiracy theorist"
| inter_netuser wrote:
| 1% loves pandemics.
| thinkmassive wrote:
| ...and all other forms of disaster capitalism
| trentnix wrote:
| _disaster capitalism_
|
| Taking egregious sums of state aid is _crony capitalism_
| and is market manipulation. And wherever you find egregious
| market manipulation, you 'll almost always find government
| doing the steering.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Can you point to an example of "capitalism" that is not
| also an example of "crony capitalism"?
|
| I feel that we should seek something more like "free
| markets" and "free enterprise". C[rony, if you insist,
| c]apitalists hate both of those things, and undermine
| them at every opportunity.
| ep103 wrote:
| disaster capitalism is a term coined by Amy Goodman to
| describe the efforts of the most politically influential
| to steer the economy towards regular crises, and then
| take advantage of those crises via crony capitalism
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| That would not apply here, since this was not a financial
| crisis or caused by systemic long term effects of direct
| government action.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Captain Government may be at the helm, but they're
| serving is at the pleasure of those contributing to their
| next campaign fund. If the Yacht owners want to go to
| Tahiti where do you think a Yacht captain is most likely
| to steer the ship?
|
| It's a cause _and_ a symptom of "crony capitalism" -- a
| feedback loop that perpetuates and exacerbates existing
| inequality.
| andrepd wrote:
| >government is doing the steering
|
| That under capitalism those who accumulate massive
| amounts of wealth can use that wealth to "buy" the state
| institutions to do their bidding, is precisely (one of
| the) problems in capitalism.
| trentnix wrote:
| One way to address that problem is to prevent "state
| institutions" from being so powerful as being able to do
| anyone's _bidding_.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Dysfunctional states aren't exactly thriving oases of
| enterprise and mutual aid, are they now? In practice
| they're dominated by warlords and rich people buy
| security and contract enforcement is a function of
| economic leverage, so poor people have very little
| economic mobility or opportunity.
| trentnix wrote:
| A state's dysfunction is not diminished by the relative
| largesse and power of its government.
| akomtu wrote:
| I remember it was mentioned in the gervais principle book:
| when an organization approaches its final stage, the top
| brass collects anything of value and jumps the ship, leaving
| the clueless staff. These recessions are a lot like this
| value extraction phase.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Absolutely. Strip the country of assets and flee to a
| stable jurisdiction.
|
| Wonder where will the American elites flee. Maybe won't
| need to, guns and all.
| isaacremuant wrote:
| It wasn't covid. It was the policies imposed in the name of
| covid. Including the absolutely unnecessary lockdowns and other
| restrictions that very rapidly exempted the elites and those
| making the decisions.
| mminer237 wrote:
| How does inflation help the rich? Doesn't that devalue their
| net worth?
| karmasimida wrote:
| Inflation on necessities like food/transportation will cause
| social issues and destabilize society. If you mass printing
| money, then such money needs to find a place to park
| themselves, most likely target would be the assets.
| ska wrote:
| It's not going to help directly. But if the inflation was a)
| produced by printing money that b) disproportionately ended
| up in the pockets of a subset of the population, one way or
| another, then it amounts to a wealth transfer.
| b9a2cab5 wrote:
| Wages are not as liquid as assets. You generally get a raise
| once every 6 months to a year, and it's time consuming to
| find a new job to get competing offers to get leverage for
| market-level wages. In contrast assets change prices every
| day, and as COVID as shown, adapt very quickly to the
| printing of money.
|
| At the low end wages are also capped by the minimum wage,
| which doesn't go up with the important inflation metrics
| (healthcare, housing, assets, education) but instead with
| regulation or CPI.
| garmaine wrote:
| Inflation is regressive. The rich don't literally hoard cash,
| and their investments are likely to appreciate, or at least
| not suffer as badly as real inflation.
|
| Have you seen how much the stock market went up in the last
| year?
| beiller wrote:
| If everyone's bank account balance goes up by 50% uniformly,
| lets say one person has 100,000 and another has 10,000. After
| the increase they now have 150,000 and 15,000 respectively.
| But the low end item costs also go up due to inflation, so
| food now costs 50% more lets say. The thinking is that this
| eats into the lower bracket much more than the higher one. So
| inflation would increase the divide between rich and poor. I
| think this makes sense, interested if I am wrong here please
| let me know your thoughts!
| donmcronald wrote:
| I don't think so. Both still have the same percentage of
| the money, so it should be even.
|
| If a rich person thinks inflation is coming they can buy
| fixed assets, invest in resource companies, invest in
| companies that provide critical services (food supply,
| communications, etc.).
|
| The problem for the poor is that it's hard to invest in
| things that benefit from inflation, especially if you don't
| have any money to invest. It's unlikely the paycheck-to-
| paycheck wages of poor people are going to go up enough to
| cover any kind of increase in (ex:) housing prices.
|
| Or you have people like my parents whose (defined benefit)
| pensions aren't going to do well against inflation. They'll
| get to watch the value of their retirement income drop like
| a rock at the same time they've seen millionaires with
| "small" businesses pocket hundreds of thousands of
| "bailout" dollars they didn't really need.
|
| Those millionaires will be the ones creating inflation by
| buying up fixed assets with their free government money. My
| parents will at least benefit from increased value in their
| house. Me and the generations after me that can't afford
| houses and don't have many fixed assets will get screwed
| really badly.
|
| I can see it coming and there's not much I can do for
| myself :-(
| akomtu wrote:
| When I reached the entry level wealth and cap gains started
| to dominate in my income, I realized one thing: there are two
| types of money, one for the poor (dollars) and one for the
| rich (stocks, assets). The gov keeps deflating dollars and
| thanks to complicated behind the scenes mechanics, that
| wealth gets transferred to assets that magically appreciate
| in value. When a recession hits, the gov evacuates the assets
| and leaves the dollars to their own devices. The poor can't
| get off the dollars because they have to spend everything
| they earn - another intentional arrangement in our economy.
| Moreover, cap gains aren't taxed. Only when you sell a small
| bit of them (or better: take a low interest loan), that small
| bit is taxed at laughable 20%. That's welfare for the rich.
| There's really no reason why cap gains (all gains, not just
| realized ones) can't be taxed at a progressive rate, as if it
| was income.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > There's really no reason why cap gains (all gains, not
| just realized ones) can't be taxed at a progressive rate,
| as if it was income.
|
| How would the mechanics of this work? Suppose I had 1 share
| of publicly traded stock A. Others sell and buy stock A at
| $x at end of day on Jan 1, 2021, and $x+$10 at end of day
| on Dec 31, 2021.
|
| Am I now potentially forced to sell some of my stock A to
| pay taxes on unrealized gains? Is this basically property
| tax, except applied to all securities?
| akomtu wrote:
| Exactly. A middle class person doesn't cry wolf that he
| needs to sell a portion of his house to pay the property
| tax, while the rich do. For example, Bezos owns 10% of
| Amazon voting shares would pay 0.1% per year in the form
| of a lien (or a loan) that lets him retain voting rights,
| but takes the tax when he sells or transfers his wealth
| (e.g. to heirs). If capital taxes existed, the rich
| wouldn't be able to lazily sit in the sp500 index, they
| would have to chase good investments (they'd have to, God
| forbid, take risks and do some work).
| qaq wrote:
| asset inflation
| amelius wrote:
| Only if they didn't invest it in real estate etc.
| rolobio wrote:
| The rich own assets like real estate/stocks that will hold
| their value through inflation. People with savings or no
| assets/savings are hurt most by inflation.
| eecc wrote:
| No because it just increases the price of stocks and real
| estate, while maintaining their value, while your cash
| deposit stays the same.
| lotux wrote:
| yes, most rich people can get good loans with low rate during
| this time, as inflation goes up, the value of asset that they
| bought with loan goes up and debt value goes down, so the get
| richer twice again that is why for example bill gates became
| biggest land owner during covid, I guess he bought lots of
| land with cheap loans
| tasssko wrote:
| Bill Gates has a team of people in a 'family office'
| managing his money the reality he probably had a windfall
| last year and needed to do something with it. Usually when
| you have a windfall you buy treasuries because they can be
| liquidated easily when new opportunities are available.
| Buying treasuries is a bad idea at the moment, they have
| negative yields when you factor in inflation. He probably
| had no good stock opportunities and there may have been
| more opportunities in farm land. Would he have used a
| loan... maybe I don't know the details but also maybe not
| his investment funds don't need the loans. My point is he
| has a good team managing his wealth and it will most
| certainly grow as a result and this team will also find
| good opportunities for him to grow his wealth. This should
| not be surprising.
| lotux wrote:
| the point is, he or his fund can also get cheap loans
| when rates are historic low by land and win twice by
| inflation
| aqme28 wrote:
| Inflation on its own isn't helpful, but when you print money
| just to pour it into the stock market, you help wealthy
| people disproportionately. You raise stocks while devaluing
| currency. Poorer people have a higher proportion of their
| wealth in cash, and are often paid in static amounts.
| forgithubs wrote:
| Net worth does not need to be kept in the form of paper
| currencies
| dehrmann wrote:
| It helps people who are in debt (there's the student loan
| reduction Biden's been asking for). In theory, it's a wash
| for assets like stocks and real estate. It hurts bondholders,
| so especially retirees.
| grey-area wrote:
| The last 10 years have seen massive asset inflation,
| unrelated to economic activity.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > It helps people who are in debt
|
| Does it really though? It definitely helps people who used
| low, fixed rate debt to buy assets that will appreciate
| with inflation, but does it really help the average person
| with $100k in student loans that isn't going to see a wage
| increase that comes anywhere close to the increased cost of
| living?
|
| IMHO the answer is no.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Federal student loans have a fixed interest rate.
| _Assuming_ inflation makes its way to wages, that makes
| the education an appreciating asset.
| cm2187 wrote:
| Depending what it is invested in. Money printing lifts asset
| prices up: stocks, houses. That's typically the sort of
| assets owned by the upper middle class, you don't keep a $1m
| balance in a savings account, particularly when rates are at
| zero or negative.
| grey-area wrote:
| The rich have assets and large debts secured on them, the
| poor have wages and small debts. Both assets and large debts
| are an advantage if inflation arrives.
| wskinner wrote:
| New money does not reach all people at the same time. Those
| who get it first benefit more. This is known as the Cantillon
| Effect. https://fee.org/articles/the-cantillon-effect-
| because-of-inf...
| donmcronald wrote:
| Yep. Basically whoever gets the free money first get to buy
| / invest before anyone else even realizes the money supply
| has been diluted.
|
| The way money is printed and given directly to the rich via
| the financial industry needs to stop. If the money supply
| needs to be increased every year it should be done by
| giving it directly to the masses via UBI or similar.
|
| I'm starting to have the opinion we've been getting scammed
| with hidden inflation since the 80s.
| Mike86534 wrote:
| It depends on where the new money is injected into the
| economy to start with. The _flow_ of newly created money
| tends to benefit the rich, as the initial injection of new
| cash is pumped into their assets / companies. That money
| becomes old and trickles through the economy devaluing the
| currency after the rich have already
| spent/used/invested/gained from it.
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| The implication there is that equities are long term an
| adequate hedge against inflation.
| speeder wrote:
| high inflation but not enough to trigger hyperinflation
| instead lead to quickly rising asset prices, like stocks,
| land, and so on.
|
| Also rich people can sometimes take loans with interest lower
| than inflation, this is basically free money.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > Also rich people can sometimes take loans with interest
| lower than inflation, this is basically free money.
|
| In Canada you can borrow well below 2% and housing prices
| in hot markets have been going up well over 10% YoY with a
| lot of predictions of 20%+ this year.
|
| Free money indeed. You just need $1 million+ to play the
| game.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| Companies can raise prices and avoid the effects of inflation
| so equities will continue to rise, while cash deflates in
| value. Real estate values keep pace with inflation, generally
| speaking. Any borrowed money can be paid back cheaper (debt
| devalues with inflation) which helps anyone who is leveraged
| on their investments crank up the ROI even more. I'm sure I
| could come up with more but those are the main three that
| came to mind.
|
| FWIW, 98% of my net worth is in stocks, the other 2% is cash
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >via inflation
|
| The poor tend to be net borrowers. The rich tend to be net
| lenders. Inflation makes the poor less in debt by lowering the
| real value of payback. Inflation helps borrowers.
| donmcronald wrote:
| > The poor tend to be net borrowers.
|
| Wages for the poor won't go up because they don't have any
| leverage in terms of negotiating. With no fixed assets and no
| negotiating power to demand higher wages, the value of the
| real payback won't change for them, but the cost of living
| will go up.
|
| It'll help a few people who got lucky and bought houses
| within the last couple of years, but the truly poor (no
| assets) are about to get much poorer in terms of purchasing
| power.
| fastball wrote:
| Not sure this is true. A wealthy person might have a mortgage
| on a $1M home while the poor are more likely to be renting.
|
| To whit, US mortgage debt in 2020 was at $10T while the debt
| that the poor are more likely to have (Credit Card / Personal
| Loan / Auto Loan) is a combined $2.5T[1].
|
| The wealthy are often highly leveraged in a variety of ways.
| Just look at some of the world's richest people - they
| generally fund themselves through loans taken out against
| their equity holdings (stocks in the case of Bezos / Musk /
| etc).
|
| So the ultra-wealthy like Musk are actually winning twice:
| once when everyone rushes to buy stocks like Tesla because
| they're worried about inflation and such, increasing the
| value of his holdings substantially. Then again when the
| inflation actually hits, because he is funding himself with
| loans, which are now easier to repay.
|
| [1] https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-
| experian/research/consume...
| gher-shyu3i wrote:
| Yet people still think having a financial system based on
| usury is an acceptable idea. Quite baffling to say the
| least.
| jessaustin wrote:
| This was version 2. Version 1 was the "great recession", when
| several investment banks found themselves insolvent after
| cluelessly underwriting an overvaluation of American homes. It
| had been their custom to play a sort of musical chairs with
| overvalued assets, unloading them on clients and other victims,
| but eventually they forgot how that game typically ends. After
| a small amount of public discussion, it was decided that a
| certain favored subgroup of the investment banks would be
| bailed out by the public but that their debtors would all lose
| their homes.
|
| This time around, that modicum of public discussion was avoided
| but we all gave those who can afford teams of lobbyists and
| lawyers lots of money anyway. For version 3, we can expect
| automatic deductions from the checking accounts of the bottom
| half of the income bracket, with automatic credit card
| transactions against those without checking accounts, to be
| transferred directly to entertainment allowances for Bezos,
| Musk, Gates, Buffett, MbL, and various estranged spouses
| thereof. "Representative government" seems fine until one looks
| more closely at who is actually represented.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| I saw people buying firearms with stimulus checks more than
| anything else. I saw a couple buy 2 identical $1300 handguns at
| once. They were joking about the stim checks. And annoyed
| they'd have to wait a week to pick up their purchases.
| jakearmitage wrote:
| What's the problem with purchasing safety devices during
| unstable times?
| jessaustin wrote:
| The problem, of course, was that _the poors_ were
| purchasing safety.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Perhaps they were hedging on what direction everything was
| going to go. I stocked up on everything but firearms thinking
| water and food would probably get me first.
| tlogan wrote:
| And this is one reason that we do not need to worry about
| inflation. All the money given to "not so wealthy" is already
| spent and gone.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| I stopped using them around two years ago when I was finally fed
| up with the increasing amount of dark patterns and gaslighting
| they did on their site. The reviews also became more and more
| inflated, I stayed at places with a 8.9 rating that were really
| shabby and subpar. The straw that broke the camel's back was when
| I booked a room at a hotel that had great reviews and lovely
| photographs, only to come to a place that was in the middle of
| being remodeled, with torn down walls and entry through a
| construction site. Also, most hotels will actually allow you to
| book rooms at lower prices and with less severe cancellation
| policies when calling them directly.
| jiofih wrote:
| The rating goes from 8 to 10 in practice, so 8.9 is like a 5-7
| :)
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| The article is thin on details.
|
| Does the 65 million Euros of state aid need to be repaid? Or was
| it free money from the government with no expectation of
| repayment?
| oneplane wrote:
| It was a deal where companies wouldn't discard the workforce in
| exchange for money.
|
| It didn't come with a ban on bonuses, but it did come with a
| bunch of middle-aged white men frowning at different middle-
| aged white men for not pausing the bonus culture.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| What does age/race/gender have to do with this?
| oneplane wrote:
| It is a caricature, but also happens to match the people
| involved, which ironically reinforces the caricature. One
| might even call it a trope.
| sebmellen wrote:
| If you replace "middle-aged white man" with "soulless
| corporate stooge" nearly anywhere this phrase is used, the
| replacement term will fit. The term "middle-aged white man"
| is a caricature of the extremely wealthy and powerful, even
| though (I believe) it is a misleading and inaccurate
| portrayal.
| yunohn wrote:
| You say misleading caricature, yet all three of the
| people named in this article are middle aged white men.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| Though I also agree it isn't misleading, using anecdotal
| evidence is not a good way to refute the claim.
| raarts wrote:
| Critical Race Theory or - in other words - anti-white
| racism is seeping into western culture everywhere. People
| need to wake up to this. It offer no solutions only
| deconstruction.
| Egidius wrote:
| While booking in fact got rid of 25% of their workforce
| polynomial wrote:
| this is kind of amazing given it appears terms of the aid
| were literally not to do this. and yet smh
| oneplane wrote:
| Oh yeah, totally forgot about that. I guess it's better
| than purging 80% or whatever they had in mind.
| [deleted]
| hathym wrote:
| My company is buying back millions of its own stock, giving 0EUR
| raise to employees.
| swiley wrote:
| Part of me wonders if that's one way to give bonuses to
| employees while avoiding a tax penalty. Most companies give
| employees stock via various mechanisms so you end up throwing
| money away by avoiding it.
| shkkmo wrote:
| The percentage of a companies stock that is owned by
| employees is rarely big enough to make this in anyway close
| to efficient.
| qixxiq wrote:
| Yes, but stock ownership isn't even and so it'll _again_
| primarily go to the CEO /etc (while reducing their tax
| impact).
|
| The employees earning minimum wage, and who likely don't hold
| any stock, won't see any of it.
| sparkling wrote:
| These "state aids" are coming from the mandatory unemployment
| insurance scheme that both employees and employers (in this case,
| Booking) are forced to pay in.
|
| It is silly to now blame companies and employees now making use
| of the insurance that they paid in for years. Imagine crashing
| your car and the insurance is refusing to pay you, arguing "but
| you just bought a second car! you don't really need the insurance
| money!". You can claim it is morally wrong, ultimately the
| government set the conditions for these programs.
|
| Also one thing to keep in mind: we don't know the exact
| conditions of these bonuses, they might be simply legally
| required to pay out the bonuses.
| nielsbot wrote:
| From the article: The bonuses were paid because they were
| "concerned they could otherwise lose the three top executives."
| acomjean wrote:
| They always say that. its not a great time for executives to
| look for new work. And in general pay has little to do with
| performance.
| yunohn wrote:
| That's not how bonuses should work. Plus, if there's no money
| to pay other employees, they shouldn't pay executives.
| savant_penguin wrote:
| The real error here is public money being given to private
| companies.
|
| Let them break
|
| Fund people, not companies
| nielsbot wrote:
| Not sure about "let them break" for a government-imposed
| lockdown, but I agree that giving support directly to employees
| to stay home from work would have been a better strategy since
| you cut out the middleman. (Use whatever method works. Via the
| unemployment infrastructure for example)
| dalbasal wrote:
| It's actually quite shocking how, when the primary idea is
| "dump money into the economy," giving the money to people
| instead of banks or firms is so controversial. It's more
| socialist _and_ more capitalist, if you believe in that sort of
| thing.
| deathcalibur wrote:
| I'm not saying you're wrong when I say consider the
| following: if every individual had a bunch of free money and
| decided to not work, then the next day they drive to the
| store and there is no one working... what do they do? Didn't
| you just cause a ton of inflation?
|
| At the end of the day, money doesn't solve problems. Work
| being done solves problems.
|
| How that should affect policy... I have no idea but I can see
| both sides of the problem.
| toxik wrote:
| It would have to be A LOT of money for people to stop going
| to their jobs.
|
| In a more realistic scenario: Maybe some people would quit
| their jobs because they gained some independence. Is that
| bad?
| deathcalibur wrote:
| The problem isn't really people quitting actually because
| like you said, that could be good. It's more like the
| business can't pay to stay open because there aren't
| enough customers to cover the variable costs. So now the
| business is closed and you have no where to spend your
| money... This realistically only affects small businesses
| like your local grocery store or whatever. Once the
| pandemic lifts, all that cheap property gets bought up by
| the Walmarts of the world and the concentration of power
| to the top 1% continues.
|
| Right? I could totally be wrong here.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| It's weird how the 'infallible invisible hand of the
| market' folks don't believe in it in practice. All the
| 'isms' seem like convenient excuses to justify selfish
| behavior in whatever way suits the argument and not these
| well thought out concrete theorems like we were lead to
| believe.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| The context of this discussions is the government giving
| free money to people.... I don't understand how you
| equate that to people not believing in market forces.
| aqme28 wrote:
| If you give everyone free money, why do you think people
| will stop working?
|
| We justify giving money to rich people because it will make
| them work harder, but we fear that giving money to poor
| people will make them lazier.
| deathcalibur wrote:
| I don't believe giving money to poor people will make
| them lazier, nor do I believe we should give free money
| to rich people.
|
| Ultimately, they want to give money to people that need
| it and will put it to good use (for whose definition of
| good, I don't know... also, we HOPE that is the case but
| obviously people are biased, politicians included).
| Sometimes it's individuals who need money, sometimes it's
| businesses (which is why they did both).
|
| I will tell you that I personally did not need any of the
| individual stimulus money, but I got the full amount
| because I don't make a ton; however, there are others who
| need the money because they have expenses much higher
| than mine, e.g. they have debt of some kind.
|
| Not trying to muddy the waters. I am trying to say it's
| not always clear who needs money and who doesn't.
| zetsurin wrote:
| >if every individual had a bunch of free money and decided
| to not work
|
| It would be predicated on the amount wouldn't it?
|
| Presumably 65M distributed equally among the people of the
| state wouldn't be enough for everyone to stop working.
|
| One thing we can say without going into counterfactuals,
| the execs probably didn't work 28M harder, or produce 28M
| in value.
| deathcalibur wrote:
| Oh I totally agree in this particular instance nothing
| good came from this "bailout". I'm merely trying to say I
| understand why small businesses need bailouts in addition
| to their employees.
| whatever1 wrote:
| Or businesses can increase their unlivable wages.
|
| I am certainly willing to pay 30 cents more for my Big Mac
| so that the employee gets $15/h instead of 8
| deathcalibur wrote:
| Isn't this mainly a game theory problem? If you don't
| force a minimum wage, then competitors will undercut each
| other.
|
| As much as we like to believe WE would go to the "more
| ethical place", unless the average person did then
| ultimately the undercutter will win. Now real life is not
| that black and white obviously. Costco pays a pretty
| decent wage allegedly but they make up for it in creative
| ways (like having the warehouse also be the storefront).
| y04nn wrote:
| I have to agree, if I want to start a competing reservation
| platform I would take this "opportunity" to launch it, but
| because big corps (almost a monopoly for booking.com) are
| helped in difficult times this makes it almost impossible to
| have competition or new small players that would have been
| advantaged by not having the weight of the big players.
| ghostwriter wrote:
| if you gather a group of people with financial independence,
| and try to bootstrap and never sell a new reservation
| platform, you can make it happen in about a decade. The trick
| is to never bloat budgets and staff, and to stay away from
| KPI - your goal is to take over regions by dumping prices and
| providing near-zero commissions on bookings from your
| platform for as many hotels as you can handle. You can handle
| this strategy among a team of financially independent members
| who are interested in the field rather than quick buck. It's
| hardly possible if you're seeking VC money.
| donmcronald wrote:
| That's interesting because I feel like _a lot_ of tech is
| in the kind of spot. If enthusiastic people come in and
| start building really good core products while charging
| fair value there are going to be a lot of bloated, wasteful
| tech companies that could end up in a world of hurt. At
| least that 's my opinion.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Tell that to plentyoffish who took on the dating market and
| consistently ranked higher than big companies like match.
|
| If bookings.com suddenly disappeared you would have hundreds
| of players ready to jump in with their own angle. What would
| you offer? Is bookings.com really holding you back?
| archibaldJ wrote:
| Computationally, company is an order higher than humans in that
| it contains "structures" designed to generate revenue, and
| these "structures" consists of physical things (ranging from
| items in a physical store to an office space to entire factory,
| etc) as well as none-physical things (e.g. productivity
| optimisation across a 'team' of people who had worked together
| for a long peroid of time, trust in the supply chain, etc).
| When a company dissolves, many of these "structures" will be
| gone. In general there are many costs to reconstruct these
| "structures" after they are gone.
|
| It will be amazing if
|
| - it's cheaper to construct these structures designed to
| generate revenue (and we already see this in tech-driven stuff,
| which was how the notion of start-up emerged from the 70s)
|
| - people are motiviated and are willing to overcome the
| hardship (as well as, in many cases, unconfortable feelings) to
| learn to construct these structures or to learn things that
| will help (e.g. programming, etc)
|
| Unfortunately, most of these structures are currently still
| expensive (thanks to this, start-ups and techs are in general
| over-hyped [1]). And most people prefer consuming stuff
| mindlessly than learning things. Mindfulness is the key.
|
| Therefore I'm extremely grateful that we as a civilisation are
| finlly entering the first phrase of the psychedelic
| renaissance. Psychedelic would always have a net positive
| impact to society at large as they force people to come to
| terms with reality as well as their very own phsyical
| existence, and be more mindful about the qualia of this world.
|
| [1]: not necessarily a bad thing as they can eventually flatten
| all these cost structures
| archibaldJ wrote:
| And intriguingly, one can also say that the phenomena of
| start-up is perhaps a branching-out of 60s' hippie movement
| (partially inspired by books such as The Whole Earth Catalog
| which is not only spiritual-ish but leans more towards
| pragmatism) where instead of going all anti-capitalism and
| trying to be self-sustainable from the ground-up and detach
| itself from the economy (which eventually always ran into
| problems cuz then it became a micro-economy itself, which was
| the very thing it tried to transcend), start-ups aims to be
| self-sustainable in the existing econcomy while detaching
| itself from the cooperate cultures.
| bazooka_penguin wrote:
| Lock down the economy, kill small businesses, hand out printed
| money like candy to big corporations. Nothing suspicious going
| on...
| [deleted]
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Fund people, not companies
|
| People work at companies. Letting productive assets fail due to
| ignorance and jealously does not help people.
| [deleted]
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| >Fund people, not companies
|
| it depended. large corporation like Apple don't need the money
| but mom and pop shop that is forced to close during the peak
| should receive money. the sad thing is corporation that clearly
| can make it thur covid is receiving the largest amount like
| https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/0...
| maxsilver wrote:
| >mom and pop shop that is forced to close during the peak
| should receive money.
|
| No, they shouldn't. Don't give any money to any corporations,
| give all the money exclusively to people.
|
| If Mom and Pop run a business, they can get cash as humans to
| float their business, just like any human could. They could
| temporarily lay off all their staff (which is OK, because
| their staff are humans, and are also getting cash)
|
| There was never any valid reason to give a single cent to any
| company.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| You force them to close if you want them to come back you
| have to keep them alive.
| jachee wrote:
| Keeping the _humans_ alive should be sufficient.
| jessaustin wrote:
| No, only the Capitalist Heroes know how to tell people to
| work. Regular humans are totally insufficient to the
| task.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You realize humans need jobs to come back to and humans
| need places to buy things and services.
| azinman2 wrote:
| Right so then after cash runs out no one has a job and no
| businesses exist?
|
| Companies are more that just a collection of people.
| tracer4201 wrote:
| I want to convince you this isn't a good idea. If all the
| businesses shut down in my town or city, what happens
| after? Where do I find work? Especially if I don't have
| sufficient capital to start a new business (never mind the
| skills or training), what will I do then? How does society
| go back to normal?
|
| Do we stop all output and just have the government mail
| checks to every individual forever? That's not going to
| work. Who is going to produce the things we need to
| function as a society?
| pwillia7 wrote:
| just keep giving everyone more money Duh!
|
| /s
| andrepd wrote:
| Please re-read the comment.
|
| > They could temporarily lay off all their staff
|
| So you pay people's salaries while they're furloughed.
| Together with moratoria (don't know if this is the word)
| on loans this means companies get "paused" while
| lockdowns are ongoing and don't shut down.
| [deleted]
| missedthecue wrote:
| Temporarily in the context of covid has meant more than
| 12 months for a variety of local shops and businesses in
| my area. They can't come swinging back signing leases and
| buying inventory after going bankrupt.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I saw 2 kinds of "small" businesses in Canada. One kind
| was hit so hard the bailout money they got wasn't even
| close to enough to keep their business running. The other
| kind wasn't impacted or even benefited from increased
| revenue.
|
| I know of at least one company in the latter category
| where the owner pocketed around $500k and I don't think
| it had much impact on how they ran their business. All
| they had to do was not layoff people they wouldn't have
| anyway and the government picked up the tab on their
| labor costs for a year. Free money!
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Or, instead of funding either corporation, just give mom and
| pop money. Instead of business bailouts, we should've done
| regular, recurring stimulus checks that would help business
| owners cover bills while they're businesses were closed, and
| help employees cover bills while they're unable to work.
| cambaceres wrote:
| Have you counted on how much this would have costed?
| garmaine wrote:
| The amount the US government has spent on pandemic relief
| is 20-30k per American, depending on how you choose to
| count.
|
| (Edit: I'm aware TFA is about about European pandemic
| relief.)
| krono wrote:
| That is exactly what was done here in the Netherlands.
| Booking.com just decided to exploit and, in my opinion,
| abuse that system.
|
| Edit: These emergency financial support measures I was
| referring to are:
|
| - "Temporary emergency scheme for job retention" (NOW)
|
| - "Temporary self-employment income support and loan
| scheme" (TOZO)
|
| - "Reimbursement Fixed Costs" (TVL)
|
| More info (in English) on gov websites:
|
| - https://www.government.nl/topics/coronavirus-
| covid-19/inform...
|
| - https://english.rvo.nl/subsidies-
| programmes/reimbursement-fi...
|
| Edit 2: Oh wait there is more:
|
| - "Subsidy scheme for events cancelled due to corona
| measures"
|
| - "TVL Stock Support Closed Retail"
|
| - "R&D subsidy scheme for the mobility sector" (RDM)
|
| - "Temporary Support for Necessary Costs" (TONK)
|
| - "Arrangement for businesses damaged by curfew riots"
| (RBC)
|
| More info: https://business.gov.nl/corona/overview/the-
| coronavirus-and-...
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| NOW appears to pay businesses up-front for, in turn,
| continuing to pay employees:
| https://business.gov.nl/subsidy/corona-crisis-temporary-
| emer...
|
| Arguably, it would've been a much better system if the
| Netherlands just... paid people directly regardless of
| who they worked for at the time, so employers didn't need
| to worry about paying employees while they couldn't do
| normal business.
| donmcronald wrote:
| I think it was similar in Canada. Everyone here that got
| laid off was eligible for government money though, so I
| think it would have been better to forgo the wage
| subsidies for businesses. A lot of them pocketed that
| money.
|
| Instead they should have let businesses lay off staff
| without feeling guilty because there was a safety net for
| those people and once a business laid off X% of their
| staff they could have been eligible for extra government
| help.
|
| That way the government wouldn't have ended up paying the
| wages of people that were needed to meet demand (and make
| profit for) the businesses that weren't really impacted.
|
| For example, local restaurants got crushed and could
| easily justify laying off 50%+ of their staff. Give them
| more money IMO. However, the delivery business down the
| street with +50% demand shouldn't be getting a nickel.
| krono wrote:
| Yeah the systems are far from perfect. They're
| inefficient, in some cases unfair, and with regards to
| abuse perhaps rely a little too much on good faith.
|
| Nevertheless the systems do exist. Financial aid was and
| even still is there for you or your business if you need
| it.
| markus92 wrote:
| That's exactly what it is. Reasoning being two-fold,
| first is that it's easy to implement as the government
| knows the exact payroll of every company anyways (they
| file taxes quarterly), second is to keep people on the
| payroll in case restrictions can be loosened. They're
| still working, so can go back to productivity
| immediately.
| amelius wrote:
| Imho, the main error is that they gave away the money
| unconditionally. The fact that the particular government didn't
| foresee this outcome is quite astonishing.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > The fact that the particular government didn't foresee this
| outcome is quite astonishing.
|
| They 100% saw this coming which is why they killed oversight.
| Best way to get Congress to pass a free giveaway is to get
| them in on the fun.
| wavefunction wrote:
| There is a reason the Republican politicians in Congress
| voted to strip the measures of even normal oversight.
| klyrs wrote:
| Given the huge bonuses bailed-out bankers got in 2008, it
| would be criminally naive to assume that politicians didn't
| plan on this happening.
| whatever1 wrote:
| They did see it coming and in fact they were trying to
| increase inflation.
| andrepd wrote:
| > The fact that the particular government didn't foresee this
| outcome is quite astonishing.
|
| Charitable of you to think that this isn't by design.
| consp wrote:
| The reasonable short notice caused the government to decide
| the lesser of evils: allow some abuse to help most,
| (un)fortunately this exposes the excesses. Booking.com
| "decided" to not take part in the second round three months
| later mainly due to the legal work being well enough
| established and in place to force the company to forgo any
| firing of people and any bonuses to executives.
|
| Yes an error, but as always there is some nuance.
| ska wrote:
| True, but there were way to to help very quickly while
| mitigating some risks, and some of this is probably
| philosophical, really.
|
| If I give your company a 10mm check, or 10mm in payroll tax
| relief, it's the same to your bottom line. The latter goes
| a long way to making sure it's applied to keeping people
| employed if that's your actual goal (which may or may not
| be your stated goal).
| dehrmann wrote:
| > Let them break
|
| There are all sorts of random shortages right now--truckers,
| lumber, cars, rental cars, computer chips. They're mostly
| annoying, but it would be a lot worse if companies didn't get
| help.
| hutch120 wrote:
| Government has been sold on the "Hobbes" vision of society and
| believes an assertion of authority is necessary in order to
| prevent civil chaos. They will never give money directly to
| people until this changes.
| https://issuepedia.org/Hobbes_vs._Rousseau
| tootie wrote:
| Money was specifically earmarked to retain employees
| primitivesuave wrote:
| Same thing is happening here in the US. For example, Trump's law
| firm Kasowitz Benson Torres took a $10m forgivable government
| loan for COVID relief [1] despite earning a profit of over $2m
| _per partner_ in the preceding years [2].
|
| 1. https://pppwatch.com/loan/9581937109
|
| 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasowitz_Benson_Torres
| kaliali wrote:
| Blame the lawmakers who wrote and voted on the laws and rules.
| nostromo wrote:
| I'm surprised anyone is surprised.
|
| Here in the US we've spent several trillion dollars on Covid
| relief so far, and there's more to come. When you're dealing with
| a torrent of printed cash of this magnitude, there's of course
| going to be a lot of it that ends up in the wrong hands for the
| wrong reasons.
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| No one would be surprised if this was about the US, but it's
| that "euro" symbol that makes it surprising.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Is it? European/Dutch & US rhetoric can be quite different...
| but the actual policies are not, at least not in a sense
| relevant to this issue. In fact, the US cut people a bigger
| piece of the covid relief money than did most european
| countries.
| e17 wrote:
| The US has even sent like $3k straight into the accounts of
| every citizen over the course of the pandemic! As far as
| I'm aware no other major country has done helicopter money
| like thia
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Much more than that if you were unemployed.
| julienb_sea wrote:
| The US money only went to households making below a
| certain threshold. Most other countries dumped heavily
| into their unemployment programs, sometimes funding full
| salaries for up to a fourth of the country over what is
| now looking like a 24 month period of time (see France).
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| Yes, it is, because you constantly hear about dollars, and
| rarely hear about euros, in the bubbles that hacker news
| readers live in.
| typon wrote:
| Neoliberalism is the hegemonic force in the world - Europe is
| no exception.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The difference between European and American corruption is
| that the former has an ally in a population that purposefully
| ignores evidence of the existence of any corruption because
| it would hurt the sense of national pride.
| nielsbot wrote:
| The execs who benefited are US-based:
|
| "As a result, the total remuneration for the three-member
| U.S. board of parent company Booking Holdings last year
| converted to more than 28 million euros. Some 5.8 million
| euros in shares and cash went to CEO Glenn Fogel, and 2.8
| million euros went to Peter Millones, the vice president.
| Nearly 20 million euros, mostly in shares, went to CFO David
| Goulden, according to company documents reviewed by NRC. The
| company was concerned they could otherwise lose the three top
| executives."
|
| Also, LMAO at "concerned they could otherwise lose the three
| top executives." They always use that excuse to plunder.
|
| Meanwhile "Fixed salaries of the management in Amsterdam
| headquarters were however cut by 20 percent"
| jiofih wrote:
| And employees' bonus were reduced due to a hard year. And
| there were layoffs.
| vmception wrote:
| The most surprising thing here is how egregious it is. Like
| everyone in these positions or studies this area knows there is
| no accountability on these, but they don't usually do it.
|
| Outside of these circles I've definitely heard people assume
| there were greater stipulations on state funding or even bond
| issuances in the fixed-income market, and want to argue that
| with me mostly given the lack of evidence of executives taking
| advantage of it for personal gain.
|
| This one is shocking because they actually did.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| >there's more to come
|
| ??? How do you figure? There's an infrastructure investment
| bill in the works which hopefully doesn't pass if the Democrats
| get to write it. I certainly haven't heard of any more COVID
| relief bills in the works though.
| Shadonototro wrote:
| why would anyone want to go to work everyday and pay taxes, when
| things like this can; and happen?
| Krull wrote:
| If it didn't come with string attached why are people mad at the
| companies? Shouldn't they either be mad with their
| representatives who allowed such things?
| hugoromano wrote:
| Stop using marketplaces and book directly, these companies have
| no risks and take 16% to 30% commissions. If consumers start
| booking directly, recovery from the pandemic will be much faster.
| gltchkrft wrote:
| Maybe they should fix their websites and refund / cancellation
| policies. No one would mind booking directly from a hotel
| website if they offered the same price, convenience and
| guarantees that booking does.
| hugoromano wrote:
| Booking.com does nothing special, it is the hotels that
| charge your card, and pay a commission to Booking.com. The
| only thing is that they enforce some common policies. Hotels
| give power to the marketplaces and then Stockholm syndrome
| kicks in.
| camillomiller wrote:
| Any "solution" to the problem of excessive power of platforms
| that is based on the "individually do the harder thing" is
| bound to miserably fail. I think this kind of fallacy should
| have a name by now.
| kristjansson wrote:
| My shorthand for all sorts of loosely related lazy thinking
| like that is "just skate better"[0]. Applies individually and
| collectively.
|
| [0]: https://youtu.be/jE494P5gQaY
| aeyes wrote:
| This doesn't work anymore, the platform is also used for
| discovering places.
|
| I have seen this both as a traveller and working in the
| industry for a little while. If you are not on Booking.com you
| might as well close, 95% of our reservations came through
| Booking.com, the rest were other platforms, direct bookings and
| people walking in.
|
| As a traveller its extremely convenient. I have a single place
| to do everything, I don't need to sign up anywhere else, I
| don't have to call, I don't have to worry about payments, in
| general everything just works without ever speaking to a human,
| I don't lose time calling around to check availability, I can
| see fotos and opinions. Consumers are not going to give that
| up.
|
| On the hospitality side we never cared much about their fees,
| it has massive benefits as well (lower fraud rate, lower no
| show rate, integration with front desk software). The only
| problem is that they generally tend to give the customer the
| benefit of the doubt when there are any problems so good luck
| getting rid of bad reviews.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Stop using marketplaces and book directly
|
| Easier said than done if you want to pay with anything else
| than cash. Or if you want at least a _somewhat_ functioning
| website where you can see if the venue is actually available
| and do booking.
| hugoromano wrote:
| I know it is hard, but I have done it and I am a Revenue
| Manager in hospitality and a tours company. You have to be
| strong, it is a long process where you get repeat customers
| and friends of customers. A small loyalty program, best
| protection if your customers deals directly. one on one
| relationship but it works.
| compscistd wrote:
| Some perspective from someone who has worked in hospitality:
| Some brands have fought back in creative ways.
|
| An essential part of being listed on Booking or Expedia is to
| agree to never advertise lower prices anywhere else, including
| your own website. That means you can share a $100/night rate on
| your own brand's site (with no commission) and you can't tell
| Booking or Expedia to show rates over $100. Thus, users have no
| advantage in going to a hotel's own site, which only shows
| their own brand's hotels. Expedia/Booking on the other hand
| show you all the hotels in the area and you can be confident in
| price-shopping (the one exception is loyalty points, but if
| you're a price-conscious, non brand-loyal customer, that won't
| matter to you). Worse, competing hotels can get better
| visibility by sharing even lower rates and promotions on these
| aggregators, and it becomes a race to the bottom, really
| hurting hotels long-term just for visibility.
|
| Choice Hotels had an interesting response a couple years ago:
| they show a "member-only rate" on their website. In the above
| scenario, technically, their public rate is $100 so Booking
| would take around $20 leaving $80 for the hotel. But Choice
| might also show $93 as an option on their website only for
| members (which is free to join, only takes an email/password).
| This way, technically their members-only rate isn't being
| advertised for just anyone so they don't run afoul of their
| Booking/Expedia agreements while only losing $7 as opposed to
| $20.
|
| Last I checked, Booking and Expedia didn't like this and they
| docked Choice Hotel visibility in their searches because even
| if it didn't run afoul of the agreement, they still have
| discretion over their search ranking.
|
| These aggregators don't need to disappear. They just need to
| lose some of their leverage over hotels. If all hotel brands
| banded together to offer their own "members-only" rate and
| customers became aware of what's happening, I'm sure it would
| really help out hotels long term.
| hugoromano wrote:
| What is shocking to me, is why aggregators got bailouts. This
| is not sustainable for the market. 16% to 30% commission,
| taxes, costs, almost hotels are subsidizing tourist stays.
| There is a path outside the marketplaces, we offer plenty of
| perks for direct guests and it works.
| woobar wrote:
| Hilton does same thing and it is not penalized but Booking.
| victordg wrote:
| "2.8 million euros went to Peter Millones, the vice president.
| Nearly 20 million euros, mostly in shares, went to CFO David
| Goulden"
|
| Goulden & Millones. You could not make this shit up.
| [deleted]
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