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Comment by tjwebbnorfolk | Hacker News Reader

It also affects unionized firefighters and teachers with pensions.

If a multi-millionaire loses 50% of their net worth, they are still a multi-millionaire. When normal people lose 50% of their net worth, they have real problems.

Not arguing for a bailout, but the "it mainly hurts rich people" argument is pretty weak, and may actually be backward.

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The hundreds of billions - in this case potentially trillion+ - of dollars not spent on bailing them out can be distributed to such pension funds instead, if that's truly the best avenue. These funds should already be very diversified in the firstly place.

Not bailing out absolutely primarily hurts rich people. This is trivial to ascertain from basic principles.

Quantitatively, yes. Qualitatively, it may affect normal people a lot more, and fit rich people it would be a lot easier to rebound.

depends on your definition of "hurt". Installing one swimming pool instead of 3 hardly qualifies as pain for most people

It does not depend on that definition. My first sentence explains why. Advocating for spending $1 trillion on bailouts means you're advocating for taking away $1 trillion from other purposes, and redirecting it to bailouts. You're not taking into account the "taking away" part and the hurt _that_ causes, while hyperfocusing on the hurt "prevented" by the bailouts. Both hurt; the former largely the wealthy, the latter largely the 99%.

What you're doing is like being scared of flying on commercial airplanes yet being fine with pitbulls and rottweilers. This is normal due to human psychology, but reality says the opposite.

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